Time for less is more for the EM Workforce

Increasing standards could enhance education, training to avoid physician surplus. Based on recent EM workforce studies, a reduction of ~ 40% for new emergency medicine (EM) residents will be needed to prevent a significant oversupply of emergency physicians (EPs). An oversupply of EPs would have a very negative impact on EM and may lead to decreases in job security, practice rights, patient advocacy and compensation. As a result, the attractiveness of EM as a specialty will suffer, which would result in less competitive applicants entering EM in the future, less qualified EPs and a negative impact on patient care.  Balancing the supply and demand of emergency physicians will result in a high-quality EM workforce. Many EM residencies utilize a large number of residents per patient volume, which has the potential to compromise resident education. EM has become increasingly complex and EPs have a much wider scope of practice than they had when these standards were initiated.  Increasing standards could improve the educational and training experience of EM residents, and result in more highly trained EPs. The American Academy of Emergency Medicine (AAEM) and the AAEM Resident and Student Association approved the following position statement in June 2021: AAEM suggests the ACGME Emergency Medicine Residency Review Committee take action to raise emergency medicine training and quality standards by setting a minimum number of patients at the primary site emergency department per ...
Source: EPMonthly.com - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Source Type: news