September 23, 2025
The 94th Annual Educational Conference proved to be exactly what attendees have come to expect from CMA conferences: a time for enriching the mind, body and soul with outstanding presentations on timely topics, good conversations and many laughs, and spiritual renewal through daily Mass, eucharistic adoration and confession.
This year’s conference, held in Kansas City, MO Sept. 4-6, was chaired by Dr. Anthony Oliva, who chose for the theme: Tradition, Ever Ancient, Ever New. In an article he wrote for The Pulse of Catholic Medicine, he explained why he picked this theme.
“I have noticed over the 23 years I have been a practicing surgeon that we have strayed farther and farther away from what constitutes the doctor-patient relationship. Many barriers have been erected between physicians and patients. As an example, electronic medical records, government regulations/mandates and third-party payers were instituted with the promise of delivering better care, but I would argue that in many ways the opposite has occurred,” he wrote.
The conference recaptured what it means to practice good medicine through the timely topics addressed by experts in the field, including the doctor-patient relationship, medical education, artificial intelligence in healthcare, gender dysphoria and end of life care. These presentations inspired lively discussion and inspired action by those in attendance.
The keynote speaker was Sr. Dede Burns M.D. POSC, a family medicine surgeon and retired US Army colonel. She shared her remarkable story that began with the influence her father, a thoracic and vascular surgeon, had on her medical vocation. She also credits her mother, who raised eight children and brought them all to daily Mass for the seeds of faith firmly planted in her.
She went to Georgetown University for medical school and joined the US Army to help pay for her education. She became a full-time officer (1982-1989) after becoming a Family Medicine physician. It was her charitable work in India that led her to do a surgical residency in the 1990s, which included caring for Cardinal James A. Hickey, Archbishop of Washington D.C., during his open-heart surgery and for Mother Teresa when she visited Washington D.C. in 1994.
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