Many ACEP members have strong feelings about expanding membership options, as evidenced by dozens of letters to the editor received in response to the pro-con article about affiliate membership published in the August 2014 issue. ACEP’s leadership has heard these concerns and responded.
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ACEP Now: Vol 34 – No 04 – April 2015As ACEP Executive Director Dean Wilkerson, JD, MBA, CAE, reported in his 2014 year-end review in ACEP Now, “the ACEP Council voted to commission a comprehensive study and report on the feasibility of creating a non-voting, non-office holding membership category for individuals not currently eligible for full, active membership at its meeting Oct. 25–26, 2014. This report, including the financial and advocacy impact of membership expansion, will be presented to the Council in Boston at ACEP15 this October. This issue deserves the kind of attention to detail and exhaustive study that will take nearly a year to complete…ACEP members should know that we will research this issue in depth and give a comprehensive report this year to the Council.”
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2 Responses to “Opinion: Open ACEP Membership to Non-ABEM Trained Colleagues”
April 25, 2015
Tony GerardThank you, Dr. Leveaux, for your passionate comments. Are you aware of the long ( and often controversial) history of ACEP’s support for non-ABEM board EP’s?
Many of us who are non-ABEM boarded share your passionate feelings about ACEP membership. But this is a difficult issue, since residency trained EM physicians have equally strong feelings, but an opposite viewpoint. Both sides agree that ACEP membership has merit.
Associate membership is important because ACEP should represent all EP’s ( strategically, its a huge mistake for the college to limit it’s membership to residency trained EP’s) But even if this happens, it won’t necessarily fix the issue you describe. Many non-ABEM boarded EP’s will still misunderstand what the college has done on this issue. But re-opening college membership will be symbolic, even tho’ associate membership will not have the same perceived merit as full membership.
Some of us have written extensively about the issues facing non-ABEM boarded EP’s over the last decade, and it’s laudable that these issues are still being discussed/ debated. ( some specialty societies in EM prefer the “Ostrich” solution*).
I’m proud of what ACEP has done for non-ABEM boarded physicians over the last two decades. Specialty societies that have adopted the “Ostrich” solution* put member’s interests ahead of patients, and ACEP has refused this narrow solution.
Let’s hope the Report on opening membership is evidence based and not emotion based. The college needs to open membership for alot of pragmatic reasons. If this happens, we will have one more thing to be proud of on a difficult issue.
( * Ostrich approach: “bury your head in the sand” = ignore the problem. This idiom originates from the habit of ostriches to lower their heads when feeding or turning eggs; they do not actually bury their heads)
June 9, 2015
Terry Mitchell, MD, FAAFP, FACEPI agree with the articles and letters that call for opening ACEP in some way to non emergency medicine residency trained physicians. I also believe they should be given an award to shoot for. I had planned to drop my ACEP membership of many years, when ACEP offered me a brief chance to become a “Legacy” physician. I am now a Fellow of ACEP and have remained a member. Membership dues and political action donations would both increase with opening up the membership, and giving the non-RTEP a title that can be earned. More physicians would be aware of the CME opportunities with receiving ACEP e-mails and lierature, and attendance at events would increase. The ACEP book store would sale more. How does anyone lose by including all the physicians who currently work in emergency departments? I can see the argument about not allowing non-RTEP’s to become eligible for board certification, but I cannot see anyone of reasonable judgement to support denying them membership and some type of merit badge that can be earned. ACEP truely has the ability to substancially raise the quality of emergency medicine in the United States in a very short time by opening the membership once again to non-RTEM physicians. Even if I were BCEM, I would still want membership opened up for both raising the quality of patient care in our nation, and for the substancial money inflow ACEP would experience.
Terry Mitchell, MD, FAAFP, FACEP