Message from the Chair

Dear Members of the RSI Section,

It has been a pleasure to work with you all. It’s been a very successful year so far for the section!

We were able to secure a Section Grant to develop the research primer for residents. Dr. James Paxton spearheaded the grant, with the support of ACEP staff Loren Rives. Please join me in congratulating Dr. Paxton! We look forward to seeing the research primer soon.

We have continued our quarterly phone calls. During the last call, we have come up with an idea to develop a guide for residents and junior faculty about academic job negotiation focusing particularly on those in a research career. Since this section is full of people who have personal experiences in this area, we would like to invite you all to be a member of this new project.

We are finalizing our manuscript regarding the scholarly activity practices of emergency medicine. Once finished, we will submit the manuscript to the ACEP Board for their review and approval. Thanks to all the members who came up with the idea and contributed heavily to the manuscript.

A major attraction of the RSI Section is the opportunity to collaborate and foster new collaboration through these types of projects. The Section is a great venue for exchanging ideas and doing projects that are promotional and progressive in nature for our specialty. The section leadership envisions the Section as a platform to give back to the community. Through our series of phone calls and meetings, we’ve discovered that this is a very energetic group of people who are eager to contribute. I really admire the enthusiasm and opportunity to lead this group.

During our last meeting, we also discussed pipeline issues in research and scholarly activity in emergency medicine. I hope to provide an opportunity for early researchers to showcase their work and to potentially obtain mentorship through the Section. Mentorship has been provided in many forms. For example, through my interviews of major researchers -- see next article for my interview with Dr. Phillip Levy! – most want to give advice and to share their life experiences with budding researchers and scholars. Through our projects (creating a research primer, helping them with negotiation skills, and providing scholarly activity models) we are striving to help young researchers in achieving their goals.

As you all might have seen the new ACGME faculty requirements, there have been substantial changes which essentially removes the provision of protected time for core faculty. Originally, the new requirements didn’t require faculty to have minimum protected time. The new ACGME common program requirements only include protected time for program directors, which may not be enough to run a residency successfully … and, in the long term, will really hurt advances in the science of emergency medicine.  ACEP has collaborated with different organizations to voice their concerns regarding the protective time, and as a result, the ACGME is now considering accepting the Task Force’s recommendation to allow EM RRCs to add requirements for protected time for core faculty.  The newest revisions are open for public comment and I urge this group to provide feedback to the ACGME in support of the Task Force recommendations and make our voice heard. Learn more here. This is a pressing issue that directly affects every single member of the section in some form or manner.

On a brighter note, ACEP Scientific Assembly is around the corner and I’m sure we’ll see a lot of work done by this community at the Research Forum. I wish you all the best in your presentations!

We will hold our annual meeting at the ACEP Scientific Assembly. The meeting time for our Section is 9:30 AM Mountain Time. Please see the article later in this newsletter about meeting details and other highlights of the Research Forum. I’ll be happy to meet you all in person and we hope to have a thick attendance at the meeting. For those who cannot make to the ACEP Scientific Assembly due to scheduling issue or any other reasons, we’ll share the minutes over email.

Lastly, I want to discuss the Council meeting, which usually happens two days before the start of the ACEP Scientific Assembly. A lot of resolutions are brought to the table at this time. As a Section, we have one vote in the meeting and you know that is not a significant number. However, if there is something you are passionate about, or your state chapter is presenting, please reach out to us. I want to make sure that our members are engaged and that we have a meaningful vote in the Council that truly represents our section.

They say Rome was not built in a day and that is true. All our efforts are small steps toward promotion of scholarship in emergency medicine. I want to thank all the scholars and Section Officers for their contributions – and Loren Rives for her support and conducting the day-to-day activities of the Section.

Again, I look forward to seeing you all at the ACEP Scientific Assembly!

Regards,

Nidhi Garg, MD, FACEP
RSI Section Chair