PGA = Post-graduate assembly. It's a big conference held in NY in December, sponsored by the NYSSA (the state society).
They have lectures, workshops, poster presentations, and reps to pick up goodies from.
I'm presenting a poster there on December 10th. I wasn't involved in the case but since I helped do the research/write it up, I got my name on there.
As far as airway workshops, I took one in mid-November in Georgia called Difficult Airway Course -- Anesthesia. I think the website is theairwaysite.com or something similar. The cost is high -- I think higher now b/c they changed from a manual to a book by one of the course organizers. I signed up before I had decided on fellowship vs work. I thought I should be exposed to different tools beyond what we have at my hospital.
The course was well worth it. The instructors are very approachable, and you get plenty of time to play with equipment. I'm a bit of a bookworm so I didn't get too much out of their lectures, but the scenarios were very helpful. As part of the cric lab, you get to play with pig tracheas. We practiced surgical cric and percutaneous using the Melker kit. That was convenient for me because we have the Melker kit at our hospital. I had seen a video about it, and played with it on a dummy once. It was nice to practice on something that feels more like human tissue.
You can stay in a hotel, but I stayed with relatives I have in Marrieta, Georgia. The place turned out only to be a 25 minute drive from their house. Visiting them again just reinforced my decision to ultimately move down south.
