Education Featured News

Dr. S. Kendall Smith named Inaugural Assistant Program Director for Residency Affairs

We are pleased to announce that Kendall Smith, MD, PhD, has accepted the role of Assistant Program Director for Residency Affairs. In this exciting new role, Dr. Smith will work closely with Drs. Thompson and Cox, other faculty leaders in the residency, and faculty mentors, as well as with the administrative staff in the education arena, to craft tailored career development pathways for residents. An important goal of our residency is to train tomorrow’s leaders in all areas of anesthesiology-related clinical practice, in research scholarship, in education, and in health systems management. There are important similarities between the role Dr. Smith will play in relation to the residents and the role Dr. Lockhart plays for faculty members, as the Vice-Chair for Faculty Affairs. As such, they will be closely aligned in their activities. Dr. Smith will try to ensure that for each resident, there is an individualized and adaptive development plan, which will be reviewed and modified over the course of the residency.

Dr. Smith is an Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology; she is board certified in Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine. She is also certified in the Advanced Practice of Perioperative Transesophageal Echocardiography. Originally from the Midwest, Dr. Smith graduated from the University of Kansas School of Medicine with an M.D. and Ph.D. in Molecular and Integrative Physiology. She then completed residency in the Duke Academic Career Enrichment Scholar (ACES) Program, following which she pursued a fellowship at Duke in Critical Care Medicine, with a focus on advanced peri-operative trans-esophageal echocardiography.

At Washington University, Dr. Smith spends her time clinically as an intensivist within the critical care division and as a member of the WUDA trauma team. She was recently appointed as co-associate program director of the ACCM Fellowship. She is currently a T32 scholar; her research is focused on circadian rhythm abnormalities in critical illness, and understanding their relevance to delirium and other disease processes. Dr. Smith is strongly committed to the success and development of residents and fellows. The Assistant Program Director for Residency Affairs is an extremely important new role, for which Dr. Smith is highly qualified. Please join us in congratulating her, and please assist her in promoting the careers and leadership development of our residents and trainees.

Douglas Thompson, MD, Residency Program Director
Tom Cox, MD, Vice-Chair for Education
Michael Avidan, MBBCh, FCASA, Head of the Department of Anesthesiology