Faculty honor

Robert Boston

Ralph G. Dacey Jr., MD, the Henry G. and Edith R. Schwartz Professor and head of the Department of Neurosurgery.

Ralph G. Dacey Jr., MD, the Henry G. and Edith R. Schwartz Professor and head of the Department of Neurosurgery, is now president of the Society of Neurological Surgeons (SNS).

The SNS is the American society of leaders in neurosurgical residency education and is the oldest neurosurgical society in the world. Dacey, who is neurosurgeon in chief at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, joins an exclusive group of neurosurgical leaders that includes Harvey W. Cushing, MD, who is regarded as the father of modern neurosurgery and served as the SNS’s first president in 1920. Additionally, each of Dacey’s predecessors as head of the Department of Neurosurgery served terms as president of the SNS: Ernest Sachs, MD, the first professor of neurological surgery in the world and founding director of the Department of Neurological Surgery at the School of Medicine; Henry G. Schwartz, MD; and Sidney Goldring, MD. Sachs was a founding member of the society in 1920.

The group’s goals include promoting improvements in education and training for neurosurgical students and postgraduates; recognizing outstanding neurosurgical care, instruction and research; and encouraging the highest standards of care for patients with neurological diseases.

Dacey plans to work with the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education to optimize a new set of procedures for accrediting neurosurgical training programs and to establish a web portal to help meet the educational needs of neurosurgeons at every point in their careers, from neurosurgical residents to practicing neurosurgeons.