When Stephen Robert Hays, MD, accepted a faculty position at Vanderbilt University after finishing his medical training in 1999, he thought of himself as “a pediatric intensivist who knew a little about pediatric pain management.”
Now Clinical Professor of Anesthesia & Pediatrics at University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, and the newly appointed Director of Pediatric Pain Services at UI Stead Family Children’s Hospital, Hays is in fact board-certified in two primary specialties (Pediatrics and Anesthesiology), as well as in three sub-specialties (Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, Hospice & Palliative Medicine, and Pediatric Anesthesiology). He is an elected member of the Executive Committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Anesthesiology & Pain Medicine, serves on the Board of Directors of the Society for Pediatric Pain Medicine after chairing the Society’s Annual Meeting in 2017, and is a Full Examiner for the American Board of Anesthesiology. He also serves on the Board’s Standardized Oral Examination and Objective Structured Clinical Examination Committees.
A native of Syracuse, N.Y., Hays earned simultaneous Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University and his MD from The Johns Hopkins University. He remained at Johns Hopkins for his internship and residency in Pediatrics, a residency in Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, and combined fellowships in Pediatric Anesthesiology and Pediatric Critical Care Medicine.
He founded the current Pediatric Pain Service and Pediatric Pain Clinic at Vanderbilt, serving as Director of Pediatric Pain Services at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt from its opening in 2004 through 2014.
With a primary appointment in Anesthesia and a secondary appointment in Pediatrics, Hays will work with the children’s hospital’s established Pediatric Pain & Palliative Care Service in broadening the scope of pediatric pain services at Iowa.
Hays notes that the children’s hospital already offers outpatient pain services for children through the recently launched Pediatric Comprehensive Pain Clinic – the only one of its kind in Iowa – under the direction of Anureet Walia, MBBS. The clinic treats children up to age 21 who suffer from headaches, abdominal pain, sickle cell, and other chronic pain.
“A strong outpatient pediatric pain presence is often the hard part from a programmatic perspective, and is the piece most often missing at other institutions,” Hays says. “We are already there.”
Thus, Hays sees his first mission here as developing a robust inpatient pediatric pain service to address the pain needs of medical and surgical patients at the children’s hospital.
After 20 years in Nashville, Hays realized it was time for a change. He explored numerous opportunities at various institutions around the country, including several leadership positions at institutions where he had trained, but ultimately decided he belonged at University of Iowa.
“From the very beginning,” he says, “Iowa just felt right. It’s everything I want to do. I can work in and represent the specialties about which I am most passionate, at an institution that is on the cusp of becoming something even more wonderful than it already is. It’s a perfect fit.”
Even Iowa’s legendary winter, in full force upon his arrival here in late January, did not faze him. “On the day of my first interview here a year ago, it was 0 degrees outside,” Hays recalls. “I took a photo of the thermometer and sent it to my wife, cautioning her, ‘This isn’t Nashville!’ She did not object, however, and our children urged me to go for it. I walked from the hotel to the hospital for my interviews, and it felt like home.”