Nai-Chien Huan

It was truly a great honour for me to be selected by the Asian Pacific Society of Respirology (APSR) as a representative to attend the American Thoracic Society (ATS) 2021 Boot Camp Virtual. The boot camp was organised by the ATS and was intended for pulmonary and critical care fellows who have matched into fellowship programs. The boot camp was held virtually via Zoom Meeting for the first time due to ongoing difficulties from Covid-19. A total of five online interactive sessions comprising lectures, tutorials, small group discussions and debates were held between February to June 2021. A wide range of topics were discussed, ranging from pulmonary function test, invasive and non-invasive ventilation to bronchoscopy techniques, critical care haemodynamics, as well as thoracic imaging interpretation.

During the sessions, I had the opportunity to listen, learn, interact, discuss, and share ideas with leading experts and pulmonary fellows from mainly the United States but also from all over the world on various interesting topics as mentioned above. Most of the educational sessions were on the topics that matter most to me in my daily clinical practice as a fellow in pulmonology or respiratory medicine. I would like to convey my gratitude to the APSR and Malaysian Thoracic Society (MTS) for the opportunity that enabled me to gain invaluable experience which I hope can be translated to better patient care at my workplace.

In summary, this was an eye-opening opportunity for me to understand how respiratory and critical care medicine are conducted globally. It was a pity that such fruitful sessions cannot be conducted face-to-face for now due to the ongoing pandemic. I sincerely hope that I will have the opportunity to attend similar sessions again face-to-face after the Covid-19 pandemic is over.

Just to share a few snapshots of the sessions. I deliberately blurred out the other participants to protect their identity. On a personal side note, the sessions were conducted live from the United States (which means they started at 3 am from Malaysia – personally a challenge to me to get up so early!)