The Annual APSF International Visiting Professorship has been established to extend and augment the impact of the APSF outside the U.S. This program represents implementations of the first of the ideas generated by the APSF Executive Committee in February intended to enhance the Foundation’s future role.

For the first recipient, the Foundation has chosen Professor Elena A. Damir of Moscow, U.S.S.R. Professor Damir had earlier proposed to the Foundation that an American-Soviet exchange program be developed whereby anesthesiologists from the U.S. A. and U.S.S. R. could visit each other’s respective countries to foster an open exchange of views and to learn more in the other country about how anesthetic risk can be lowered everywhere.

Professor Damir, who is Chairman, Anesthesia and Reanimatology of the Central Institute of Advanced Training of Physicians at Botkin Hospital, Moscow, and President of the All-Union Society of Anesthesiologists and Reanimatologists, will arrive in Boston on Sunday, October 14. She will then leave on Thursday to attend the ASA Annual Meeting in Los Vegas, and from there go to San Diego, Los Angeles, Gainesville, and New York City.

In each city, she will be hosted by anesthesiologists who have volunteered to extend their hospitality to welcome Professor Damir to America and will visit several medical centers in which there are activities with special emphasis on patient safety. She will give a lecture in each city describing the status of anesthesia and its impact on patient safety in the U.S.S. R. Also, Dr. Damir will be given free time for sightseeing and cultural exchange at each stop.

The APSF is confident that this visit is the beginning of a successful International Visiting Professorship Program and invites comments from Europe-an and other countries regarding patient safety as well as views of the APSF and its goal to have no patient harmed by anesthesia.

Professor Damir, an absolutely delightful person who speaks fluent English, was first encountered by this reporter in Moscow in May at a joint program of the U.S.S.R. Society and the Massachusetts Anesthesia Council on Education. This program provided the opportunity for some 40 American anesthesiologists to learn about anesthesia in the Soviet Union. Several Western European anesthesia professors also contributed to a successful venture.

Ellison C. Pierce, Jr., M.D. is President, APSF