A new attendance record was set with more than 5,970 4-day paid registrants and about a thousand more single-day registrants, guests, and exhibitors at this year’s Scientific Assembly in Las Vegas.

The previous attendance record was set in 2009, when 4,663 emergency medicine specialists visited Boston. This is the third consecutive year ACEP has seen record attendance at Scientific Assembly.

Next year’s conference will be in San Francisco; plan to attend on Oct. 15-18, 2011.

Along with featuring nationally recognized faculty members, the 2010 Scientific Assembly had many activities that annually make this conference the premier emergency medicine educational event.

Council Adopts Resolutions That Shape College Policy

Members of the ACEP Council adopted several resolutions during its 2010 meeting in conjunction with Scientific Assembly.

The 330-member Council represents all 53 chapters, 30 ACEP sections of membership, the Emergency Medicine Residents’ Association, and the Association of Academic Chairs in Emergency Medicine.

The Council shares responsibility with the ACEP Board of Directors for initiating policy. The Council helps shape the strategic plan by representing the interests of its various constituencies. Resolutions can be proposed by chapters, sections, or individual ACEP members, and they are deliberated during the Council’s annual meeting. Then, the ACEP Board of Directors reviews and approves or rejects the Council’s decisions.

After one of the meeting’s most spirited discussions, the Council approved a resolution “that ACEP engage in a formal education program to assure state chapters are briefed regarding the efforts by non-ABEM and non-AOBEM entities to hold their members out as ‘board-certified’ in emergency medicine.”

This resolution also states that “ACEP engage in both national and state lobbying efforts to educate the several licensing agencies” about ACEP’s policy regarding board certification and the certifying bodies recognized by the College.

The Council referred to the ACEP Board a resolution that would define an emergency physician after much debate. Supporters said the definition would be consistent with current ACEP policy, and those in opposition said the definition was divisive and could have unintended consequences.

Several practice issues were also addressed. The Council adopted a resolution calling for ACEP to meet with the American Psychiatric Association to create a guideline for determining the medical stability of psychiatric patients that includes ACEP’s Clinical Policy on the subject.

Additional resolutions ask ACEP to create a policy supporting the discretionary use of prescription monitoring programs in every state, to support the development of Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education–accredited fellowships in undersea and hyperbaric medicine, and to advocate for maximum legal penalties for violence against health care workers.