COMMITTEE REPORTS
ACEP President’s Message By William Jaquis, MD, FACEP ACEP President ’19-20
The years are short, but the days are long. This is my last article to FCEP as the ACEP President… and my last speech to Council is coming up soon. I have been thinking quite a bit, not only of this year, but the three decades of both being an emergency physician and the 30-year mark I recently hit as an ACEP member. If you spare me the comments on age, I will spare you the long retrospective look into my career. To begin, I would like to share an overview of one of the major events of the last few months: the Summit on Preparing for the Next Pandemic. I am humbled and gracious for the many hours of preparation ACEP staff put into this summit, and the tremendous knowledge exchange from many of our experts in emergency care. I truly believe the efforts of the dozens of people involved will serve as a blueprint for many activities in emergency medicine for years to come. To summarize, the summit’s eight sessions included discussions on: • Communications: What breaks down often in a crisis is communication. How does the information get communicated within ACEP, within our communities and from the different perspectives of the roles we serve? We need an organized plan to reach everyone who needs to know: health care systems, emergency teams and other stakeholders.
• Data and Analysis: This pandemic
has brought an unprecedented flow of information through traditional and non-traditional channels. In a very dynamic environ-
ment, the noise must be minimized to find the signals. How do we stay informed on rapidly changing standards of practice, and how can we raise awareness more quickly? We need verifiable data systems that interconnect at the local, state, regional and national levels. As an aspiration, the interconnections at an international level would allow more coordinated responses.
• Deployment and Distribution
of Physicians and Other Health Care Workers: Saturation of the workforce in highly affected communities leads to more demand than capacity and rapid burnout of the health care system. Strategies to move the workforce to the need, not only intra-specialty but inter-specialty, were necessary and can be improved.
• Disparities and Vulnerable Pop-
ulations: We have long known that health outcomes are worse in vulnerable populations and where there are disparities in access to care. Outcomes in patients with COVID have certainly shown the same trend. As with any coordinated plan for an unexpected event, we need specific plans to alert and support these populations and their caregivers.
• Information Flow: Events such as
these create different experiences in different communities based on many factors. How can and did we share that information effectively across those communities and stakeholders so that we can be better prepared? We need to develop plans that will enhance community trust.
• Research: Good discussion on
pretty much the same research
EMpulse Fall 2020
questions as any – what happened, why did it happen (and what confidence do we have that these answers are “correct”), and what do we still need to learn. We need to build these networks now in anticipation of the next event.
• Supply Chain: One of the biggest
and ongoing stories of our experience is the inability to manufacture and distribute goods that we need related to health care delivery. Understanding the supply chain helps us define the barriers and demand new solutions for emergency care.
• Workforce Support and Sustain-
ability: Physicians in general are experiencing significant burnout and depression. Especially in the context of this year, emergency physicians express an even greater level of those conditions. How can we support them starting at even the ground level of physiologic and safety needs? We need the systems that support our colleagues, reducing the barriers that currently exist which prevent them from getting the help they need.
In one of my favorite quotes, Sir Isaac Newton stated that “if I have seen a little further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” My presidency began chronologically last October, but in reality it began when I started emergency medicine about 30 years ago. I often think of the growth of emergency medicine as having some very distinct periods of rapid change. The first, of course, is the pioneers who had a vision to create a better system of care in our emergency rooms. Taking risk and ridicule, they Continue on page 8 » 7
