Hadi Sakhai, M.D.

Dr. Sakhai has practiced anesthesiology since 1999 and has been a pediatric anesthesiology attending since 2004 at Children's Health in Dallas, one of the country's large tertiary children's hospitals, and at its Plano campus since 2015. His patients range from premature neonates to teenagers, and occasionally adults with congenital conditions who still receive their care in a children's hospital.

He has been a member of the backup cardiac anesthesia team since 2007, and served for ten years on the liver transplant anesthesia team, including as its director. He served as Clinical Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology and Pain Management at UT Southwestern for twenty years, and in 2024 was promoted to Adjunct Associate Professor.

Quality and safety

He created and chaired a hypothermia reduction committee whose work lowered his department's postoperative hypothermia rate from 9% to 2%, provided 20 hours of continuing medical education to more than 30 attendings, and was published in the Journal of Clinical Outcomes Management. He has since led a quality improvement project on giving cefazolin to patients with penicillin allergy labels, approved for 20 hours of CME for the anesthesiology, pediatrics and surgery departments, and has mentored residents whose QI work was accepted at the ASA annual meeting.

Clinical technology and operations

Much of his leadership work has been about getting the right information to clinicians at the right moment. He has led his department's public website and internal SharePoint knowledge library, worked with data intelligence teams on large-scale Epic data retrieval and reporting, prepared the department's anesthesia records for the 21st Century Cures Act and OpenNotes, led the rollout of secure clinical messaging, and improved PACU nursing documentation. As co-chair of the department's recruitment committee since 2006, he has helped recruit more than 50 pediatric anesthesiologists and interviewed about 500 physician candidates.

Teaching

He has taught residents and fellows for two decades, with lectures and simulation sessions on airway mechanics, induction of anesthesia, premedication, and transport of the critically ill child. In October 2026 he lectured to pediatric anesthesiologists at Meyer Children's Hospital in Florence, Italy, on reducing postoperative hypothermia.

Why Nur MD

Nur means light. The practice exists to bring the experience of a busy academic pediatric anesthesia department to hospitals, surgery centers and businesses that need it, one engagement at a time.