From the Chair
Critical Care Medicine Section
September 2009, Vol 10, #1
Todd L. Slesinger, MD, FACEP
I cannot believe how fast this year has gone by, and I hope to see many of you at the upcoming section meeting in Boston. The meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, October 6th, 2009, from 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM and it will be as exciting as ever.
First, I must remind all of you that we are having our Bi-Annual elections this year, and they will be done electronically via email in the next few days. This process is consistent with the operational guidelines that were approved at the last section meeting. The results of the election will be announced at the meeting. You all should have gotten emails about nominations and follow up emails with the candidates for Chair-Elect, Secretary/Newsletter editor and Website Editor. We truly need all of you to vote for the future leaders of the section.
The nominees are:
Chair –Elect:
Secretary / Newsletter Editor:
- Jennifer Axelband
- Brian Wright
Website Editor:
The meeting will also be exciting as we will have representatives from the American Board of Emergency Medicine (ABEM) there as always and they truly have a great deal to report this year. As far as I know both the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) and ABEM have agreed at their respective Board meetings to a certification pathway in Critical Care Medicine for emergency physicians. Therefore ABEM could co-sponsor ABIM's CCM pathway. This is very exciting as there now may be a pathway to US board certification that does not involve EM-IM-CCM. An application will now have to be made to ABMS (American Board of Medical Specialties) for approval. I am sure that our ABEM leadership will explain this process at the meeting.
I do not believe this will be the last pathway available as talks with the American Board of Anesthesia (ABA) are still in progress. This is a huge step for us, and finally we are seeing results of all that we have fought for, and I am very thankful for all the work ABEM has done for us.
I know that all of us that have completed CCM training and are in-training are wondering what that means for us. I am sure that there will be a "practice track" for certification, but the details are not clear yet to me. I also know that this section will have a great deal of input on the ABMS application and those details, and we will lobby for all of our EM-CCM colleagues. Let me stress that this is a very important next step for our future membership, and that we should support ABEM in its endeavors.
I am also proud of all the work Tim Ellender, Lillian Emlet and David Huang have done on the EM-TRACC section grant, as the results of this grant will be very helpful in the above process with ABEM.
We have much more to discuss at the meeting and I hope to see all of you there at this historic time.
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