21st Annual Academic Surgical Congress

February 11-13, 2025 | Virgin Hotels Las Vegas, Las Vegas, NV

SUS 2018 Presidential Address – Taylor S. Riall, MD, PhD

Taylor S. Riall, MD, PhD gives her 2018 SUS Presidential Address “Enjoy the Journey”.

A career in surgery is both highly rewarding and personally challenging. A successful surgical career and happiness are not mutually exclusive. As surgeons’ lives and responsibilities change, their priorities shift as well and they must make changes consistent with those priorities to maintain their career/personal satisfaction and continue to enjoy the journey. This talk will focus on lessons learned from a single surgeon’s journey and will focus on the role of mindfulness, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence as tools to help surgeons develop resiliency and respond rather than react to the stress inherent in their environment in  a way that promotes their wellbeing.

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Taylor S. Riall, MD, PhD, FACS, is Professor and Acting Chair of the Department of Surgery at the University of Arizona, College of Medicine – Tucson. She joined the faculty after 10 years at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, TX. Her clinical expertise is in general and pancreaticobiliary surgery, including pancreatic and periampullary cancer, acute and chronic pancreatitis, gallstone disease, gastrointestinal cancer, and general surgery. She has extensive expertise in comparative effectiveness and health services research. Her research has focused on the quality of cancer care and the care of surgical patients. Dr. Riall has been instrumental in developing and implementing critical pathways to streamline care, improve outcomes, and decrease cost of patients undergoing pancreatic, gallbladder, and colorectal surgery. Dr. Riall is also an executive leadership coach, trained at the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching. She applies her leadership training as a developmental tool to help surgeons and residents reach their full potential by raising self-awareness, developing emotional intelligence, clarify their goals, identifying and addressing personal challenges, and consciously improve and integrate the many facets of their lives.