Emergency Medicine Workforce Committee: ‘Tis the Season

‘Tis the Season…

Julie Vieth, MBChB FAAEM

…For state legislative work to begin! Over the next few weeks and months, many states will begin their 2022 legislative sessions. The Workforce Committee will be using our new Action Center to help track important scope of practice and other related emergency medicine workforce bills that are introduced. But, we need your help! If you know of a bill in your state that is introduced that will expand the scope of practice for non-physician practitioners or remove the physician from the patient care team, please let the Workforce Committee know.

In addition, we encourage you all to become members of your state medical society. This is truly where you can have an impact with your state. Many state medical societies are begging for active engagement, particularly from younger physicians. Your views and impact can be longstanding. Many of us did not go into medicine to work in the legislative arena. In fact, most of us have never been taught how to do this work, and our recollection of a how a bill becomes a law is from Mrs. Smith’s fifth grade social studies class. However, you are an expert in patient care—specifically in emergency care when patients often have nowhere else to turn. All of us know someone who has been a patient at some point in the emergency department and they definitely all have an opinion of that visit and that doctor they saw. Legislators are no different—they rely on their constituents to bring issues to them and to impact how they vote. But, they also rely on content experts—and that can be you. These relationships take time to build, but it can start through your medical society or just as a local constituent of their district.

The Workforce Committee has put together a handbook of how to effectively do this work and we invite you to take a look at the Lobbying Primer for Emergency Physicians. Throughout the next few months, we will also be hosting multiple online interactive sessions to help you get involved, know the issues, and move you step by step through the process of connecting with your legislator and becoming a content expert. Look for those to be advertised in your weekly AAEM Insights email.

If you’re interested in joining the Workforce Committee, please submit an application. We would love to hear from you!

Links

1. https://aaem.quorum.us/home/

2. https://www.aaem.org/UserFiles/file/ EMWFlobbyingprimer.pdf

3. https://www.aaem.org/get-involved/ committees/committee-groups/em-workforce