ECPS Chair's Update: New Grads, Big Wins, and a Summer Send-Off

By Laurel Barr, MD, FACEP

Congratulations to the graduating Emergency Medicine residency class of 2026! Your years of hard work are paying off. You are now a well-trained and highly competent clinician and diagnostician ready and willing to see the sickest of the sick at a moment’s notice. You can stabilize pulmonary edema in one room while resuscitating the septic patient in another. You can provide comfort to a grieving family in one room while verbally deescalating with a sandwich in another. And you can do all this while the only time you have for your own sustenance is in between rectal exams. It is truly awesome what you are capable of. Whether you choose to hone some more amazing skills in your chosen fellowship or step into the attending role as the calm confidence in the face of the storm you know you are, I hope you take some time to relax and congratulate yourself for your remarkable accomplishments.

While I’m at it, I would like to also congratulate several ACEP ECPS members who were elected to join the governing council of the Young Physician Section of the American Medical Association. Dr. Daniel Udrea joins them as Chair Elect, Dr. Christopher Libby as Councilor, and Dr. Sophia Spadafore as Alternate Councilor. It was a clean sweep, with every possible EM candidate elected to their chosen position. These amazing ECPS members represent your interests not only to ACEP leadership but to the broader medical community. Having seen them each in action, I can personally attest they will fiercely advocate for you with the kind of intensity and style only forged in an arctic tundra.

The future of the Emergency Medicine residency continues to evolve. This month, the ACGME released a statement that the four-year residency mandate will be postponed until further study, allowing both three- and four-year programs to continue in their respective lengths. Instead of length, EM residency programs will need to have patient volumes sufficient for 2,500 patient visits and 135 critical care patients per residency position. Other notable changes include providing rotations in low resource settings, 16 weeks of critical care time, 20 weeks of pediatrics, 4 weeks of POCUS, and other more structured experiences. Your ECPS leaders will continue to work closely with EMRA to monitor further developments with the goals of ensuring that EM training is high quality and adequate preparation for the demands of our clinical environment without placing undue administrative or other burdens on residents; and advocating for collection of high-quality data to inform strategic evidence-based decisions.

With all this happening the ECPS newsletter will take a break for the summer and be back again before Scientific Assembly in the fall. We won’t be gone, though! If you have a chance in between shifts and sunshine join us for our next webinar July 28 for a discussion on personal finance. We’re also opening nominations for ECPS Chair Elect and Alternate Councilor so if you ever thought about joining our efforts to advance the specialty towards high quality patient care and sustainable fulfilling careers this can be your chance. The beauty of ECPS is you don’t have to have 20 years of experience to qualify. You just need a willingness to imagine yourself in the role and go for it.