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President’s Comments SAEM is Shaping the Future Education, Science and Practice of Emergency Medicine
Our SAEM members make our Society all that it is, and I couldn’t be any prouder of all that you have done, especially over the past two years: the patient care you provide, the education and mentorship for our learners, the scholarship and research discovery to advance emergency care, and all your volunteer service, especially to SAEM, making us better than ever.
Angela M. Mills, MD
For my inaugural SAEM Pulse column, I want to share some incredible SAEM highlights. Because of the great work by all of you and our staff, SAEM and our Foundation are now a combined $20 million organization. We are over 8,300 strong — our highest membership ever. I am proud of what we have accomplished through the pandemic where we have seen the sharpest trajectory in our membership numbers over the past two years. The amount of content being produced by our academies, committees, and interest groups is tremendous, with significant group membership growth, expansion of executive boards with many new leaders, and countless new products and services for our members.
All the emergency medicine (EM) organizations, including SAEM, have been collaborating over the past two years to tackle the topic of the EM workforce. In addition, we have created a new Workforce Development Committee within SAEM specifically to define the evolving landscape and workforce of academic EM and to develop a multiyear plan to address where SAEM can uniquely support dynamic changes in the workforce.
We know that diverse teams are smarter and more successful, and I am proud of SAEM’s commitment and intentionality to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) within all aspects of our organization. SAEM will be leading an all-emergency medicine organizations DEI task force so that we may work together to advance our specialty.
SAEM is the premier organization for developing and supporting academic leaders. In response to you, we started the eLEAD course this year with the highest application for any course ever.
As educators, we strive for both innovation and high-quality standardization of education in an extremely complex specialty. We have advocated, and continue to advocate, for protected time for our faculty educators and quality scholarly activity requirements of our residents. The pandemic created unique challenges for medical students, clerkship directors, program directors, and student advisors. Through the leadership of SAEM’s Clerkship Directors in Emergency Medicine Academy (CDEM) academy, we continue to lead in multiple aspects of the residency application process and in advising our students in areas such as away rotations.
At SAEM we are proud to increase the impact, productivity, implementation, and visibility across the spectrum of emergency care research. Academic Emergency Medicine Education and Training Journal has (AEM E&T) moved to a continuous publication model and substantially increased the number of high-quality education papers being published. And it was just announced that our flagship journal, Academic Emergency Medicine, just received it's highest impact factor ever: 5.221! In May, the GRACE team released the second publication in the series of Guidelines for Reasonable and Appropriate Care in the Emergency Department, which focuses on abdominal pain.
The SAEM Foundation is our specialty’s biggest foundation, and, together with SAEM, has awarded over $9 million to more than 400 academicians! SAEMF is in a position of strength with a $12 million endowment enabling it to award over $850,000 in grants this year — more grants than ever before. Over the last two years, we have had a significant increase in donations, especially from our members. My thanks to everyone who has donated and, in so doing, invested in the most promising educators and researchers in emergency medicine.
SAEM is shaping the future education, science, and practice of emergency medicine. I am proud to be your president this year and am committed to advancing and strengthening our Society and specialty. Thank you for entrusting me with this incredible opportunity and responsibility.
ABOUT DR. MILLS: Angela M. Mills, MD, is the J. E. Beaumont professor and chair of the department of emergency medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons and chief of emergency services for NewYork-Presbyterian –Columbia
