Critical Care Section Comments from the Chair

Welcome to the ACEP Critical Care Section Web site!

The past few years have seen significant growth for the Critical Care Section (CCS) and emergency medicine/critical care medicine (EM/CCM) in general.

During my predecessor's tenure, we have (1) established strong ties with the Surviving Sepsis Campaign, leading to ACEP's inclusion in this international effort, (2) jointly published a White Paper on critical care training and certification for emergency physicians in both Annals of Emergency Medicine and Critical Care Medicine, which covers the history and current state of EM + CCM, and lays out future recommendations and (3) received in 2005, awards from ACEP for both membership growth and service to the college.

Our web site is under active construction, and we plan to include more Powerpoint lectures on topics relevant to EM/CCM, lists of mentors, and other useful information. We've set up our website to be of particular use to the junior EM resident interested in CCM. Our goal is that this website will serve as a resource for those in EM, particularly residents, who are interested in CCM. Our Chair-elect, Dr. Todd Slesinger is leading the revamping of our website; please contact him with any suggestions.

We also will expand our newsletters with more articles, clinical tips, and distillation of key papers. Please contact Dr. Joseph Garcia or Dr. Lillian L. Emlet if you would like to submit an article for a future Section newsletter.

The future is bright for EM/CCM and these are exciting times. Going forward, we will continue our work with SSC, our work with the certification issue, and improve the Section so it can best serve its members. Together, I know that we will steadily make progress in bringing our two favorite specialties closer together, in pursuit of the late Dr. Peter Safar's vision of "seamless critical care" from the ED to ICU.

For those interested in pursuing CCM fellowship training, please click the "Fellowships" link. While this data is from ~2002-3, it will at least provide you with a starting point as to where to apply.

Lastly, I encourage you to join our "sister" sections - SCCM's (Society of Critical Care Medicine) EM section and EMRA's CCM Committee.

Feel free to email myself or any of the Section officers with any additional questions or feedback.

Sincerely,
David T. Huang, MD, MPH