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Open ACEP Membership to All Emergency Physicians

By Sullivan Smith, MD, FACEP, Chair of the ACEP Careers Section | on August 12, 2014 | 1 Comment
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Open ACEP Membership to All Emergency Physicians

Allowing ED physicians not certified in EM to join will fulfill our mission—and ultimately help patients

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Explore This Issue
ACEP Now: Vol 33 – No 08 – August 2014

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
– Sir Winston Churchill

Should ACEP reopen membership to non–emergency medicine board-certified physicians? Absolutely. Before we get started, this is not an issue of emergency medicine board certification and whether that is considered the gold standard. Rather, it is an issue about who can join ACEP, our professional organization, and whom it represents.

Why must we reopen the College? Easy—it is our mission. Have you ever really considered ACEP’s mission statement? Here it is: “The American College of Emergency Physicians promotes the highest quality of emergency care and is the leading advocate for emergency physicians, their patients, and the public.“

The Big Tent of Emergency Medicine

ACEP is facing a choice in how we will define ourselves and who we will count as members in the future. Should we open the tent of emergency medicine to those physicians who work by our side in the ED but are not EM certified, as Sullivan Smith, MD, FACEP, argues here? Or should we save our tent for those who have dedicated time and effort to EM certification and maintain the current membership policies, as Russell Radtke, MD, FACEP, recommends? What do you think? Send your comments to acepnow@acep.org.

Consider who this includes and what it says. “Promotes the highest quality of care.” Where? Everywhere. For whom? For all emergency physicians, their patients, and the public. “Advocate for emergency physicians, their patients, and the public.” The same group is addressed here. One could argue that, in order to be an emergency physician, you must be American Board of Emergency Medicine or American Osteopathic Board of Emergency Medicine certified or eligible, or members of ACEP as defined by the ACEP Board of Directors in 2011. If so, all of the patients and public who are served by the non–EM boarded physicians or physicians who aren’t ACEP members are left out, according to our mission statement. That doesn’t make sense. In order to fulfill our mission, we must embrace all emergency department physicians, their patients, and the public—not just a few, not some, not in certain places, not just EM board certified, but all the physicians who regularly provide emergency care, their patients, and the public.

Why must we reopen the College? Easy—it is our mission: “ACEP promotes the highest quality of emergency care and is the leading advocate for emergency physicians, their patients, and the public.

All across America, 24-7-365, there are professional men and women who cannot join our College but saddle up anyway and go to work in their local, often small, rural EDs—places where resources are often few, payment for work is often wanting, and recruiting is, at best, difficult. If they do not answer the call, who will? Often, these are the very physicians who cannot join our College. Like it or not, these physicians are necassary to fill the gaps in staffing at the nation’s emergency departments. It is the world we live in today and most likely tomorrow. These physicians, patients, and public need the full resources, advocacy, and support of ACEP. They deserve to be under the umbrella of the nation’s premier emergency medicine organization, ACEP.

Pages: 1 2 3 | Single Page

Topics: ACEPAmerican College of Emergency PhysiciansEmergency DepartmentEmergency MedicineEmergency PhysicianMembershipPoint/Counterpoint

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One Response to “Open ACEP Membership to All Emergency Physicians”

  1. August 25, 2014

    Anoop Kumar Reply

    What’s missing in this conversation is the topic of what the core skill is in emergency medicine. Consummate emergency physicians are masters of management as a whole, not just differential diagnosis or doing procedures. Leadership and management define the core of EM, but our residency programs and professional societies have so far not embraced this philosophy. Because we haven’t done so, we are a fractured specialty. We argue over who really is an EP and who deserves to be boarded without being clear on who we are to begin with.

    If we embrace this philosophy and act on it, we will take our specialty to new heights as leaders in healthcare. It is something we sorely need in today’s healthcare climate.

    I commented extensively on this is an article written last year:
    http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2013/09/leadership-management-define-core-emergency-medicine.html

    Cheers,
    Anoop Kumar, MD

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