EMRA, the Emergency Medicine Residents’ Association, is the future of our specialty, and anything that ACEP decides to do needs to be done in partnership with and in close collaboration with EMRA. If we could somehow capture those people who might not currently be members but would like to be members, and we can do so in a way that does not put them at the same level of the gold standard of an emergency physician, then we should see if we can do that.

Right now, we’re an organization of just about 33,000 emergency physicians, and I want people to think about what kind of power we could have in terms of our advocacy and in terms of our patients if we had 50,000 members. What could we do in Washington to fight for reimbursement, to fight for medical liability reform? The larger you are, the more presence you have. The larger your voice, the more represented you are and the more you get what you want for yourself and for your patients. We need to work with our young physicians and have them understand that doing so would not constitute a threat to them, that they’ll always be the gold standard, and that if we could be more inclusive, it could actually be a win-win-win-win. It could be a win for those physicians, it could be a win for ACEP, it could be a win for our young physicians, and it could be a win for our patients.