Ten years ago Ron Cunningham, then Director of Communications for the American College of Emergency Physicians, was looking for a way to bring some new ideas and creativity into the monthly newsletter for our members, ACEP News. He wanted to create an Editorial Advisory Board, a group of members who would be a source of innovative thinking. I had been writing for the publication from time to time. Some of the articles had been on topics in ethics, some – coauthored with medical journalist Jeanne Lenzer – on clinical controversies. I eagerly accepted Ron’s invitation to serve on the new editorial board. Over the next two years my role with the publication expanded, first as I became associate editor to help Linda Lawrence sort through the clinical content our new publisher, Elsevier, was offering, and then taking over when Dr. Lawrence moved up in ACEP leadership.

The partnership with Elsevier transformed ACEP News from a monthly source of news about what ACEP was doing to a newspaper brimming with clinical content, full of reporting about presentations being made at medical meetings. It was my job to choose material that was relevant to the practice of emergency medicine and to make sure the quality of information was high. It had to be “news you can use.”

My partners on the Elsevier side (later Frontline Medical Communications), managing editors Terry Rudd, Leanne Sullivan, and (most recently) Mark Lesney, should all be sainted for putting up with me. I doubt they had ever worked with a medical editor with such a low threshold for declaring a scientific study presented at a conference to be absolute rubbish. But I thought if a study was not worthy of publication in a peer reviewed journal with high standards, it did not merit the attention of our readers. ACEP News was not formally a peer-reviewed journal, but I was determined to do the best I could, even though I was but a single peer, to keep “rubbish” from appearing before the eyes of ACEP members.

In the last few years I have been writing some editorial commentary to accompany a few of the articles. Other members of the editorial board have also been engaged in this effort to offer some perspective on the science. Readers have liked this, and I must say it’s been fun doing it.

In April 2011, I attended a conference, held annually at the University of Iowa, called “The Examined Life: Writing and the Art of Medicine.” It inspired me to start a blog, and after I’d been writing essays for a while, a few ACEP leaders decided selected pieces would be of interest to our readers. The title – of the blog and the new column – was an allusion to a whimsical remark made many years ago at an ACEP Council meeting by future AAEM founder Bob McNamara, who referred to “the wisdom of Solomon” when he followed me at a microphone during a debate.

As our page count has expanded from eight into the 40s – about half of them ads, because that’s what it takes for the publication to cover the costs of production and distribution – I have labored to assure the information presented to you has been relevant and useful. It would be easy to apply the simple test of whether I like something. What really matters, though, is whether readers find it to be interesting and of practical value. The readership is not monolithic, and you’ve let us know when we were getting too absorbed in an area that is not everyone’s cup of tea. So, for example, we’ve gotten letters telling us we could cut back on the number of articles addressing the fine points of using diagnostic ultrasound at the bedside. But I believe we’ve mostly gotten it right in mixing up the content to appeal to the broad range of your interests.

Earlier this year ACEP’s Executive Director Dean Wilkerson asked that we take a fresh look at the publication and consider a new direction. A new publisher was selected, and it was decided that change should be paired with one at the helm. My good friend Kevin Klauer, Speaker of the ACEP Council, will be serving as Medical Editor in Chief of the new publication, ACEP Now. (Just so you understand, that expression does not mean what it does on Capitol Hill; Kevin and I really are friends, having worked together in ACEP for many years, and I am an admirer of his record of achievement.)

The eight years I’ve spent as medical editor of your monthly publication have been, as I have repeatedly described them, a labor of love. For six of those eight years I was a member of the ACEP Board of Directors, which meant I had inside information on College activities. But I wanted ACEP News to offer some independent perspective at the same time it served as an official publication. Sometimes that ruffled feathers, and I have been grateful to Nancy Calaway, Ron Cunningham’s successor as Communications Director, for her diligent efforts toward keeping me out of trouble.

Most of all, of course, I am grateful to you, ACEP members, for being loyal readers over the years and giving me the sense of purpose that helped drive me to meet deadlines each month and do all I could to make these pages worthy of your time.

Dr. Solomon teaches emergency medicine to residents at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh.