ACEP22: You Did It!

ACEP22 is over and we accomplished our San Francisco objectives: We held our first meeting; Signed up over 100 members to the At or Near Retirement Member Interest Group (MIG); and started the process to become the newest, and very unique, ACEP Section!

Thanks to all of you who went out at ACEP22 and asked EPs to go to the engagED website and add their names to the sign-up list. We wouldn’t be where we are without you.

With at least 6 former ACEP Presidents, 2 Council Speakers, 6 ACEP Curmudgeons, 5 Chairs of the Board, and numerous award winners and Titans of our organization, our first meeting was a great success. We filled the room with experience, expertise, passion, and friendship. We agreed (will miracles never cease) on the Goal: to create & maintain a meaningful Section that allows members to REMAIN RELEVANT in ACEP after they hang up their stethoscope.

Our working Mission and Vision statements are at the end of this article.

I agreed to serve as Chair with Fred Dennis as my Vice Chair and Pam Bensen volunteered to be our first Remaining Relevant Newsletter editor.

The basis of this unique (To be) Section is the knowledge that all who have joined have had long careers primarily in Emergency Medicine and are still engaged. And, we all want to help colleagues ranging from Residents to Retired to share in the lessons learned and avoid burning out or even quitting medicine altogether.

We all agreed to recruit at least 2-3 new members to the Group using State Chapter Executives and Newsletters to augment the QR code Fred Dennis supplied to take colleagues to the sign-up page on the engagED platform. Our MIG was recently highlighted in an ACEP Now article and we hope to develop contacts with EMRA, EM News, and other publications.

We will target specific audiences, especially those in the ACEP "Retired” membership category and those who have left ACEP in the last few years but who may now find relevance in post-retirement ACEP.

We look forward to working with existing ACEP Sections, Chapters, and Committees where our interests and expertise overlap.

Commitment, Collaboration and Camaraderie, Basic Section Values

We are in the process of completing the application to become a Section and will submit it to the ACEP Board for approval in time for the February Board meeting. Approval as a section and ensuring we have a minimum of 100 members by the end of 2023 means we will have a Councilor at the 2024 ACEP Council Meeting in Las Vegas. Regardless, we are anticipating engagement in ACEP23, including Council Resolution interaction.

Please go to the ACEP engagED platform. Your posts will make it interesting to others. Help us recruit membership. Have your friends of any age sign up.

… Let's REMAIN RELEVANT!