Dr. Sladen graduated from the University of Cape Town Medical School in 1970, receiving the University Gold Medal for best graduate. 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. Dr. Sladen is boarded in anesthesiology and critical care medicine, and is a Fellow of the American College of Critical Care Medicine (FCCM).

Dr. Sladen practiced cardiac anesthesiology and critical care medicine at Stanford and Duke Universities before joining Columbia University in 1997. At Columbia he served as Executive Vice-Chair of Anesthesiology, Chief of the Division of Critical Care Medicine, Medical Director of the Cardiothoracic and Surgical Intensive Care Units and Medical Director of Respiratory Therapy. During his tenure as Program Director of the Anesthesiology Critical Care Medicine (ACCM) Fellowship, Dr. Sladen trained more than 100 ACCM Fellows.

Dr. Sladen received multiple teaching awards at Stanford, Duke and Columbia; is a member of the Virginia Apgar Teaching Academy at Columbia; and is a recipient of the Society of Critical Care Medicine’s Shubin-Weil Master Clinician Award. He has served as Chair of the Board of Trustees of the International Anesthesia Research Society (IARS), and President of the Association of Anesthesiology Subspecialty Program Directors. Dr. Sladen is the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Critical Care Anesthesiologists (SOCCA), and a Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists. In 2015 Dr. Sladen was elected Physician of the Year at Columbia University Medical Center and became the first incumbent of the Allen Hyman Professorship of Critical Care Anesthesiology.

Dr. Sladen retired from clinical practice at the end of 2015 but continues to be active in voluntary teaching, clinical research and academic work. Over the past five years he has participated as a consultant in institutional external reviews of cardiothoracic surgery and critical care, heart transplant and lung transplant programs at major medical centers, as well as providing departmental level consultative services in critical care medicine and cardiac anesthesiology. In 2019 Dr. Sladen was elected an Emeritus Member of the Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons Academy of Clinical Excellence.

As examples of his ongoing academic activity, Dr. Sladen has a study on quality of life in patients on ventricular assist devices in press with the Journal of Cardiac Failure, participated in a panel on ethical decision-making in the ICU at the 2020 American Society of Anesthesiology annual meeting, and led an educational panel on acute kidney injury for SOCCA as well as one on ethical decision-making in the ICU at the 2021 IARS annual meeting.