Legacy of Excellence Digital Flipbook

LEGACY OF EXCELLENCE: RICHARD W. WAGUESPACK, MD PRESIDENT FROM 2013 – 2014

R ichard W. Waguespack, MD, attributes the influence of his mother, a nurse trained at Charity Hospital in New Orleans during World War II, for his decision to choose medicine as a career. During his junior and senior years at the Louisiana State University (LSU) School of Medicine, he started looking at surgical specialties, particularly during an anesthesia rotation that offered him the opportunity to view different specialties up close. “I think it was the breadth of otolaryngology and several key people at medical school that really confirmed my interest,” he explained. “My journey with the Academy began when Byron J. Bailey, MD, a Past President of the AAO-HNS, sent us as residents to the Annual Meeting in Dallas, Texas, in 1977,” he wrote in his Bulletin column early in his presidency. “My mentor, the late Cary N. Moon, MD, of Charlottesville, VA, was a candidate for the presidency in 1980 as I completed my residency; he encouraged me to join the Academy. It was a natural extension of my professional growth to join and attend.” Dr. Waguespack’s first formal involvement with organized medicine was with the Alabama Otolaryngology Society where he began engaging with our specialty leadership on the state level. He then recognized that the AAO-HNS Board of Governors (BOG) was a natural opportunity to start becoming more involved on the national level. He attributes his father with the obligation to pay back to his profession and specialty. After completing his residency at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, Dr. Waguespack was a community-based practitioner for 33 years before becoming clinical professor at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. He also served as otolaryngology section chief at the Birmingham VA

Medical Center and is there again on a part-time basis.

Prior to being elected President of AAO-HNS/F, Dr. Waguespack served in numerous roles including being a Board member as Coordinator for Socioeconomic Affairs and as BOG Chair. He was a reviewer for the Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery journal, chaired several AAO-HNS/F committees, and was a member of the Academy’s team of CPT Advisors. Within the specialty at large, Dr. Waguespack was a senior examiner for the American Board of Otolaryngology from 2008 to 2012 and served on the

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