Dawn R. Tartaglione, D.O., FACOS Inaugurated as President of the ACOS

Dawn R. Tartaglione, D.O., FACOS was inaugurated as President of the American College of Osteopathic Surgeons on Monday, October 5 at the Ceremonial Conclave during the 2015 Annual Clinical Assembly.

Addressing the audience, Dr. Tartaglione discussed the responsibility of service and what lies ahead for the College and its members.

Responsibility to Serve

"I am both honored and humbled to serve as President of the American College of Osteopathic Surgeons (ACOS). As I see my trainers, our Past Presidents, and all the new Fellows and new members in the audience, I feel a heightened sense of responsibility to serve the College.

I am surrounded by mentors, colleagues, friends and family that have supported and encouraged me. I feel a great debt of gratitude to all of you for allowing me to serve in this position and I will perform my duties to the best of my ability.

It is a special privilege to become the first neurosurgeon to serve as your President and for that I thank you all and the Board of Governors."

Our Future

"Where each of us comes from and where we grew up shapes us all, but I think going down this path to become an osteopathic physician and surgeon has profoundly shaped who all of us are as adults. We have all sacrificed some thing or many things to serve humanity in this capacity. Many surgeons have other talents, many of us could have pursued some other field or any other field, but we stuck with this. Why? Many reasons drive us to stick it out in our surgical fields.  We range in age and are each in different phases of training, practice, and retirement. We are at various stages of hopeful, tired, burned out, and inspired.  How can we understand each other and what can the College do for you?

Those are some of the challenges that the Board of Governors and the surgical discipline officers are facing. All of these bright minds are working together to find a way to serve you, as we function but to serve our members.

Times are a-changing. The unification process is happening. Your Board, its leadership, our talented CEO and staff, and your strategic planning committee will continue to work relentlessly to make sure that osteopathic surgeons in training and osteopathic surgeons in practice have equal opportunities to seek additional training, to obtain certification, to maintain certification, and to continue to fellowship with each other through our online communities and at Clinical Assemblies of the future. Myself and the Board of Governors takes very seriously our charge to live up to the standards set by the ACOS leaders of the past.
 
There is no denying that uncertainty exists in our future. Possible adversity will need to be overcome, but this is the time when we will gather our strength and work together collegially with all surgeons to preserve our ability to serve our patients while bringing our osteopathic approach to the forefront of medicine in the entire country and quite possibly in the world.

I call upon each of you to contribute your time and efforts to our profession and College whenever possible, sharing your talents by teaching, mentoring, or lecturing. I offer gratitude to those members and leaders that have served before us and know that we will continue to draw upon their experience for guidance. They have faced tougher times in this profession than we will ever know.

Before I go, I will share a little exchange I had with my precious seven (going on eight) year old niece Karmen last May. She said, “Aunt Dawn, why do you have to travel so much and go to meet with the people and the other doctors?” I was really taken aback then and have continued to think about this question for some time. I think I do it and I think all the Board of Governors and other College leaders do it for the same reasons that all of our previous leaders did it. This isn’t just a club we belong to. We serve the American College of Osteopathic Surgeons so that we can find ways to secure the future of osteopathic surgery, to make sure that we seize opportunities to demonstrate what osteopathic surgery really means to us, and to show that we provide an exemplary service to our patients throughout the world."