The Philippine Society of Vascular Medicine (PSVM) recently celebrated its 20th  year anniversary.  Born in 2002, with only a few vascular medicine specialists  which gradually grew in number and now with 151 active members in the different regions of the country,   is an attestation that we have made a long stride in two decades.  

 

I am truly grateful to the pillars,  leaders  and members of PSVM for showing  great passion for excellence, service and a vibrant commitment to establish a strong and solid foundation to make our society a well-established  and recognized medical discipline.

 

For the past three years, we have experienced in our lifetime the emergence and unprecedented surge of Covid 19 which has taught us invaluable lessons in life apart from surmounting the daily challenges of the pandemic, with transitions from  lockdowns to  virtual meetings  and eventually  hybrid  formats.  As we rise out of this global pandemic, we shall  persevere and  be more resolute  to serve the needs of our growing membership by blazing new trails and adapting  innovations in support of our mission and vision. It would be great to focus on engagement with our members as more and more young doctors are fascinated with Vascular Medicine. We shall pursue more opportunities and collaborate with different subspecialty societies and industry partners given the current tide.  This is a wonderful opportunity to reconcile what we have missed in the past three years.  I would like to encourage  our members to get involved and be part of the different committees of  our society.  We will continue on the task of promoting education and training  through our vascular convergence   and adapt consistently  our core curriculum in the different training institutions.  We shall expand   our research programs  for our trainees and members and strengthen  research platforms to support more projects including clinical pathways  and incidence of venous thromboembolism  in the Philippines and make use of the outputs from our VTE Caravein.  We shall ‘circulate to educate’ in our face to face encounters through our  advocacy programs such as  Vascular Journey and  Vascular Disease Awareness projects plus  a new online season for Ugat Serye 3  with the support  of our hardworking Board of Directors, Council Chairs and the active involvement of our members.

 

Our cutting edge annual scientific convention for 2023  entitled Vascular Health: Keeping up with the Changing Times, is a full face to face event. This  promises to be very exciting with interesting scientific presentations  by renowned local and international speakers. 

 

As we pursue these initiatives, we are driven by a strong conviction of our main purpose which is to provide the best care possible  and expand  our  reach to save lives and limbs of  patients with vascular diseases.  And as more opportunities continue to unfold, we shall continue to respond to the best of our ability.

 

To get things going, we are revitalizing our website which is a valuable tool in disseminating information not only to our colleagues in the medical field but more so to the public at large. We wish to raise awareness and share more knowledge on vascular diseases and other related fields with our information campaign. We invite everyone to spend some time browsing through our website which shall be updated regularly.  Special thanks to the hardworking website team headed by Dr Rex Palma and our  young dynamic  members for all their efforts  of putting things together to give our members and guests the best experience using this  website.  We shall be open to suggestions so we can serve your needs better.

 

Thank you once again for this great opportunity to serve as your President. I hope we can continue the legacy and excellent work done by our leaders.  I will be delighted to hear your inputs to help me steer our society in moving forward and achieving its goals for 2023 and beyond with our next leaders.

 

To my co officers and board of trustees…. thank you and I salute you all for your hard work and dedication.