Robert N. Sladen, MBChB, FCCM

Dr. Robert Sladen is a native of South Africa who graduated Summa cum Laude from the University of Cape Town Medical School. He trained in internal medicine in South Africa and England, anesthesiology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and critical care medicine at Stanford University.

Following two decades on faculty at Stanford and Duke University, Dr. Sladen was recruited to Columbia in 1997 by Dr. Margaret Wood as Executive Vice Chair of Anesthesiology, Chief of the Division of Critical Care Medicine (CCM), and Medical Director of the Cardiothoracic and Surgical Intensive Care Units (CTICU, SICU). 

Over the next 18 years, Dr. Sladen built an Anesthesiology-led critical care faculty that provides care for nearly 3,000 patients per year, and supervision and training of anesthesiology and surgery residents, physician assistants and acute care nurse practitioners. Dr. Sladen taught critical care to generations of fellows, residents and medical students in the classroom and at the bedside. As Program Director of the Anesthesiology Critical Care Medicine (ACCM) Fellowship he trained more than 100 ACCM Fellows, whose subsequent careers have contributed to the program’s reputation as one of the best in the country. 

In 1998 Dr. Sladen created and managed the Departmental Annual Academic Evening, now in its 20th year. In the same year he launched weekly CUMC Critical Care Grand Rounds (CCGR), which became a “home” for all CCM practitioners at CUMC. In 2015 Dr. Sladen was elected Physician of the Year at CUMC, and in the same year became the first incumbent of the Allen Hyman Professorship of Critical Care Anesthesiology.

Dr. Sladen received prestigious teaching awards at Stanford, Duke, and Columbia, and was elected to the Virginia Apgar Teaching Academy in 2010. In 2013 his past ACCM Fellows persuaded the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) to name him the national Shubin-Weil Master Clinician. During his tenure in at the Department of Anesthesiology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, Dr. Sladen served as Chair of the Board of Trustees of the International Anesthesia Research Society (IARS); President of the Association of Anesthesiology Subspecialty Program Directors (AASPD); President of the Society of Critical Care Anesthesiologists (SOCCA), which in 2009 awarded him its Lifetime Achievement Award; and a Director on the Board of the Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiology (SCA), which in 2018 awarded him its Distinguished Service Award.

At the end of 2015, Dr. Sladen retired from clinical practice at CUMC with the title of Allen Hyman Professor Emeritus of Critical Care Anesthesiology. He has continued to be actively engaged in teaching, clinical research, and academic work at Columbia.

Updated June 30, 2023