The Society for Pediatric Sedation®, a non-profit organization, is a multidisciplinary, multi-subspecialty group of healthcare professionals dedicated to promoting safe, high quality pediatric procedural sedation. For over a decade, the SPS has been working to ensure that all pediatric patients faced with a procedure have the opportunity for their caregivers to minimize the distress associated with the procedure, while increasing likelihood of procedural success, using safe and effective evidence-based sedation strategies. Through our committees, the SPS membership promotes research, education, as well as quality and safety in pediatric procedural sedation.
Mission
The Society for Pediatric Sedation (SPS) will strive to be the international multidisciplinary leader in the advancement of pediatric sedation by promoting safe, high quality care, innovative research and quality professional education.
History
Officially incorporated in 2007, the SPS was founded after a seminal meeting September 9, 2000. Drs. Joseph Cravero and George Blike hosted the Dartmouth Summit on Pediatric Sedation through grant support from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The resultant white paper, “Pride, Prejudice, and Pediatric Sedation: A Multidisciplinary Evaluation of the State of the Art” set the stage for the creation of Pediatric Sedation Research Consortium (PSRC).
The society was founded based upon the need for a broader clinical structure encompassing research, quality and safety, and education. The maturation of the society’s structure was facilitated by a second AHRQ-funded symposium in November 2011. This summit framed the goals of the society for the current decade around the six aims of healthcare quality, outlined in the publication “Great Expectations: Defining Quality in Pediatric Sedation”. The focus on sedation safety, effectiveness, efficiency, timeliness, patient- and family-centeredness, and equity continues to guide the work of the society today.
The PSRC has evolved to a large multicentered, multidisciplinary database, eventually resulting in over two dozen highly-powered studies aimed at objectively addressing questions of safety and efficacy raised at the Dartmouth Summit. The PSRC continues to provide the only existing multi-institutional database for pediatric sedation data, with nearly 500,000 case entries since its inception 15 years ago.
Acknowledgements
Without the dedication of all of our volunteer members, the SPS would not be the leading source for education, quality guidelines and research on safe and effective pediatric procedural sedation. The committee chairs should also be acknowledged for their leadership and hard work towards guiding their sections to the next level.
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