The American Board of Emergency Medicine has been approved to grant certification in the subspecialty of Emergency Medical Services. Certification in EMS is open to any physician who is certified by an American Board of Medical Specialties Member Board and fulfills the ABEM Policy on Medical Licensure and the EMS Eligibility Criteria.

Both documents – the licensure policy and the criteria – and the Core Content of EMS Medicine and are available on the ABEM website. The application period for the first EMS certification examination continues until June 30, 2013. The first EMS subspecialty certification examination will be administered Oct. 23-25, 2013, at Pearson VUE professional testing centers. ABEM is also preparing for the EMS Maintenance of Certification (MOC) program. Each physician who attains certification in EMS in 2013 will begin participating in EMS MOC in 2014.

One component of MOC is Lifelong Learning and Self-Assessment (LLSA).

LLSA addresses issues of relevance to current practice. The LLSA tests are multiple-choice, open-book tests based on a number of relevant readings. ABEM encourages EMS organizations and individual physicians to submit suggestions for readings. For more information, go to www.abem.org.