by Jenelle Grewell
Jill Kilkelly, M.D., has been named chief of the Division of Pediatric Anesthesiology after serving as interim chief since November 2016.
“It’s a huge honor to have the opportunity to lead an outstanding group of colleagues with the hope of taking our division further forward from its current great position,” said Kilkelly, who joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 2007.
Kilkelly said one of her goals as chief will be to balance growing clinical demands with the research and education missions of the division.
“Specifically, in the near future, we have to address outpatient ambulatory care centers for pediatric patients and how we will seamlessly add those services to our clinical workload and work flow,” she said.
This will allow both the ability to better use the fixed space at Monroe Carrell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt for the sickest, most complex patients while taking simpler, routine operative pediatric cases to suburban locations so that more children can easily access Vanderbilt’s outstanding pediatric surgical services.
Kilkelly said the pediatric anesthesia fellowship program remains a major educational focus for the entire division, which also has a strong commitment to the clinical training of residents and student nurse anesthetists who rotate through to learn pediatric anesthesia, as well as the CRNAs who provide much of the service.
On the research front, Kilkelly said the division is a relatively young group with lots of exciting, positive ideas.
“People are doing really good things, asking smart clinical questions and turning those into clinical research projects that will ultimately make a difference in terms of care for children in the future,” she said.
In 2012, Kilkelly became clinical chief of the Pediatric Anesthesiology Division and was named Perioperative Medical Director of Children’s Hospital. She was invited to take on the interim chief role in November 2016.
“It’s a tremendous pleasure to watch someone develop from being a clinical manager to someone who really understands the academic, educational, clinical and leadership profiles of all of the faculty in the division, and to have a leadership vision that involves taking care of all of those aspects of their careers,” said Warren Sandberg, M.D., Ph.D., chair of the Department of Anesthesiology.