Dear Critical Care Section Members,

I hope everybody is having a fantastic summer. After continuous rain for several months, we in Oregon are finally enjoying our delayed Pacific Northwest sunshine. We are really looking forward to our section meeting in Orlando next year. Additionally, we would like to announce several initiatives being planned for the remainder of the year.

Our section members have very busy clinical roles throughout the nation. We would like to honor our clinicians with a member spotlight. For our first spotlight, I would like to recognize the achievements of our very own chair-elect, Jay Patel. Dr. Patel is a critical care physician currently practicing at the Medical College of Wisconsin. In his five years in practice, Dr. Patel has already made significant contributions to the nutrition community. He applied for the competitive Nestle Nutrition Institute fellowship and was easily selected. He is active in nutrition research and is developing a reputation of a prolific academic author. Dr. Patel was recently selected to become an associate editor of Nutrition in Clinical Practice. Dr. Patel will take over leadership of the section in 2018 and I can assure you that the section will be in great hands!

I would also like to announce several initiatives we plan on rolling out this year. First, we plan to hold a “journal club” review of new critical care nutrition literature. We are working on the timing, logistics, and details. Our goal is to establish a forum to discuss new advances in the nutrition and metabolic care of our critically ill patients. I am in search of volunteers willing to present articles in the forum. This should be a “low stress” event and am looking forward to interacting with the entire group!