This year, 2018, marks the 30th anniversary of the Association of Anesthesia Clinical Directors (AACD). The AACD was formed at the 1988 ASA Annual Meeting, coincidentally also held in San Francisco, as it will be in October 2018. The society was founded in order to provide a forum to explore, through association and dialog, solutions to the then-common problems encountered by operating room clinical directors.
Over three decades, the problems have changed, but the importance of the society in finding solutions has not. Initially, the society primarily focused on efforts related to efficiency and staffing. Later, as the practice of medicine, technology, and political and regulatory climates have changed, the society has tackled new issues such as quality, information technology, the Perioperative Surgical Home and value-based purchasing.
One of the first efforts of the AACD was the publication of the now widely cited AACD Procedural Times Glossary (AACD-PTG).1 This...
