Coffee Break: Tiff's Takes on the AAAA Conference '26

Tiffany: back to PreAA Pathways. I your host Tiffany My co-host and one of my favorite people, Adrienne, was at the AAAA conference with me the weekend before last, but she's currently recovering from gum surgery and can't record, but the people need to hear this. So I am going in solo. This is a coffee break episode. So No structure or agenda, just me telling you a little bit about the AAAA 2026 annual conference while it's still warm. ⁓ So grab your drink and let's go. So I sat in on some incredible sessions I want to share two them specifically as a pre-AA because this is what it looks like when you start to see the real depth of this profession. It is not just giving anesthesia. It is continuous, high stakes anticipation of what the human body is about to next. the physiologically challenging airway, Dr. Kumar's core message was something every Pre-AA needs to hear early. Every single you do in anesthesia has a consequence. ⁓ The drugs that put a patient to sleep also relax blood vessels and change how blood moves through the body. ventilator pushes air in with positive pressure, which squeezes the veins around the lungs and makes it harder for blood to return to the heart. For healthy patients, the body will adapt. For critically ill patients, those same routine steps can cause a blood pressure collapse before you've even started the procedure. Dr. Kumar put it simply: getting the breathing tube in is not the finish line. That is just the beginning. an I have watched patients desat, where their oxygen levels drop fast during intubations and I've seen the team move, move, This session me language for something that I'd already witnessed with my own eyes. Sarah Whitfield, who is a practicing CAA and the founder of spoke about pacemakers and ICDs, implantable cardioverter defibrillators. pacemaker is for a slow heartbeat. It sends electrical to keep the heart on rhythm, like a metronome. ICD will do all of that also watch for dangerous rhythms, ready to pace rapidly or deliver a shock to bring the heartrate back. So same family, different jobs and they do respond the same way in the OR. Electrocautery, the electrical tool used to cut and stop bleeding in surgery can confuse these devices. So protecting a pacemaker versus an ICD patient in that situation is completely different. The wrong approach can cause a pacemaker to stop working an ICD to shock someone who doesn't need it. I've personally handed that little blue donut to the anesthesiologist way more times than can count. ⁓ but I never fully understood until the session why it mattered which device the patient so filling that gap between, "Oh, I've seen this" and "I understand this" is exactly why being in that room before school is so valuable. There was also a panel on CAA advocacy. I think pre-AAs specifically underestimate how much this part of the profession's story belongs to us. Washington state just became the first state on West coast to license CAAs, joining 24 jurisdictions nationwide. The panel broke down what that took, months, but years of sleepless nights, walking into legislative offices. correcting misinformation before they could even make their own cases. Taylor, who championed the bill, said She does not want lobbyists explaining this profession to her. She wants the actual people doing the work walking through her door. And she said that if you see her at a parade or a community event, walk up and introduce yourself. She emphasizes any micro interaction where you just say, "I live in your district, I'm training to be a CAA, and here's what that means for your constituents." Those conversations accumulate and that is what advocacy is. And that is so personal to me. I grew up watching my immigrant family navigate a healthcare system not built with them in mind. So every licensure win is a door opening for a patient who otherwise wouldn't have gotten through. There is currently only one CAA serving in elected office in this entire country. One. The path to changing that starts with being visible right now. And there is the Anesthesia For All Act, HR 6545 and this is something that you can contact your congressional representative about today before you even have a single credential behind your name. the keynote here because it ties everything together. Shenandoah Chefalo walked us through ACEs, Adverse Childhood Experiences, a study that how we understand human health. The finding: childhood trauma does not affect your mental health. It changes your biology at a cellular level. Higher rates of heart disease, cancer, addiction. of adults have at least one ⁓ and number one predictor of long-term life Outcomes is not intelligence or grades. ⁓ It a sense of belonging She also said that trauma doesn't just live in individuals, it lives in organizations These same symptoms will show up in teams, healthcare systems, and the fix doesn't start at the top. It starts with one person deciding to show up differently who then will change those around them. And I want to be honest about why this keynote hit the way it did. I'm a first generation daughter of Vietnamese immigrants. helping them in their nail salon when I was eight. Nobody ever handed me a framework for what growing up in chronic stress does to your nervous system. But sitting in that room, ⁓ clicked. The hyper vigilance, the people pleasing, the relentless drive, it doesn't come from nowhere. It has a name and it doesn't have to be the whole story. if we can meet pre-AAs are maybe first generation, overextended, carrying more than they'll let anyone see and say them, your wellbeing is your not afterthought, that is the work. And Shenandoah put language to exactly why that work needs to be done. I am also program development intern at CAA Matters working with Mary Jeanne Roberts, who you may know as the awakened anesthetist on an wellness curriculum Called Pre-AA Matters. of that role, I got to walk on the AAAA stage. As far as know, the first pre-AA ever to do so. I was simply there to help Mary Jeanne demonstrate something, a small role. And yet I stood on top of that stage and looked out at a room full of people i had spent years studying in front of them not from the back of the room but as someone who belonged even if just for a moment... that was the smallest role yet it felt like ⁓ everything Mary she has dreamt from the beginning of her career of interviewing the AAAA president for her podcast. a lifelong dream. ⁓ And this weekend I got to sit row and watch her do She was confident, completely herself, just fully present. listening to Emily Mycyk, who is the current president, in real time, bouncing off what she said, flowing like she was born to do this. And I sat thinking, am watching someone evolve to their final form in front of me. looked at her the way that you look at someone who has put stars in your sky. If you guys are readers, you know that phrase, but she is such a role model to me, not just professionally, but as a human being. So Jeanne, if you are listening, thank you for the dream that you chased, for letting me watch you catch , and for showing me what it looks like to walk into a room as your full self and not shrink from a single second of it. Before Emily Mycyk was AAAA president, she was a bartender. a school non-traditionally at 29, spent six years doing prerequisites, working, taking the MCAT, and got into Case Western. Her interview barely touched They wanted to hear the bar. Reading people, managing the chaos of it, building trust with a stranger in under a minute. That became her greatest clinical strength. She also talked about test anxiety, said it never fully goes away, even as president, she was a nervous wreck studying for recertification. But what helped was saying it allowed to her cohort and realizing everyone the same. Belonging as resilience. Right back the keynote. I have spent a lot of my life making myself smaller, if I was too much or enough or the space I was moving into was even meant for me. I think a lot of people know that feeling. You work so hard to get into the room and then you wonder if you actually belong there. this weekend answer that question for me. people in that room were not tolerating my presence. They were welcoming it. There was no door held slightly closed. It was open. They were waving me so you a listening to this, you belong in these conversations. You belong in these rooms. This profession has space for you and the people building it are working incredibly hard to make sure that's true in every state, at every in an every community that needs access to care. thank you so much for listening to the super quick little coffee break with me. ⁓ Adri is going to be back soon and when is, we are doing this entire weekend justice together. But until then follow us on Instagram and TikTok @PreAAPathways. Everyone I mentioned today will be linked in the show notes. Stay safe out there and we'll talk to you soon. Bye!