S A E M
Newsletter of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine March/April 2007 Volume XVIIII, Number 2
901 N. Washington Ave. Lansing, MI 48906-5137 (517) 485-5484 saem@saem.org www.saem.org
AEM Reviewers' Workshop
PRESIDENTIAL REPORT Emergency Medicine Meets with The Director of the NIH Bob Neumar was joking with me recently about how times change. In 1989, Bob was a Sarnoff Fellow, working with me in Chuck Brown’s lab, wrestling pigs to anesthetize them for studies in cardiac arrest and resuscitation. James Hoekstra, MD NIH funding was a dream for most of us then. The number of funded EM investigators was easily counted on one hand. A mere 18 years later, we are sitting around a conference room table with some of the most prominent leaders in academic emergency medicine, discussing strategies to synergize emergency medicine research and the Roadmap Initiative with Dr. Elias Zerhouni, Director of the National Institutes of Health. It’s not very often that any of us have a chance to participate in an historic event of this stature and precedent. For me personally, it was a distinct pleasure. The meeting with Dr. Zerhouni was born out of SAEM and ACEP’s desire to follow through on the recommendations of the Institute of Medicine Report on Emergency Care. The IOM Report recommended that the “Department of Health and Human Services should conduct a study to examine the gaps and opportunities in emergency and trauma care research, and recommend a strategy for the optimal organization and funding of the research effort.” SAEM and ACEP had agreed to partner together to exploit this report recommendation to our benefit, using the combined power of ACEP’s advocacy expertise with the research expertise of the SAEM IOM Task Force and the ACEP Research Committee. ACEP’s discussions with the Secretary of DHHS led us to believe that Dr. Zerhouni would be a great audience to hear our concerns on the part of emergency care researchers. In what could best be described as “the value of friends in high places,” Gordon Wheeler and the ACEP advocacy office in Washington were able to secure a meeting between Dr Zerhouni and the leadership of SAEM and the ACEP Research Committee. The rest is history. Bob Neumar, Judd Hollander, Chuck Cairns, Sandy Schneider, Roger Lewis, Gordon Wheeler, and I met with Dr. Zerhouni for a little over an hour. We had planned a very organized presentation which included a number of proposals for incorporating emergency care research into the NIH Roadmap Initiative. We discussed the inclusion of emergency care training grants and emergency care
The annual AEM Reviewers' Workshop will be held on Thursday, May 17, 2007, 12:00-1:30 pm, during the SAEM Annual Meeting. The Workshop will focus on common reviewer areas of contention from the manuscript author(s)' point of view and will be coordinated by John Burton, MD. During the Workshop the audience will view historical reviewer comments from recent manuscript submissions. The audience and Academic Emergency Medicine editors will discuss the issues raised by these examples in an open discussion forum. Areas that will be covered during the workshop will include reviewer professionalism, reviewer-communicated anecdotes, reviewer comment style and tense, number of reviewers utilized, review size/detail, and the balance between reviewer and editor in ensuring a concise, thorough, and professional review communicated to those submitting a manuscript to Academic Emergency Medicine. All AEM reviewers are invited to attend.
In Memory of Eduardo Marvez-Valls, MD By Dr. Peter Deblieux Charity Hospital, New Orleans, LA The LSU Emergency Medicine, Charity Hospital family lost one of its best and brightest faculty members in the fall of 2006. Dr. Marvez-Valls was an Associate Clinical Professor of Emergency Medicine and faculty member for over two decades. He was an Associate Program Director for emergency medicine; helping shape the training of over 200 residents as they became emergency medicine physicians. Dr. Marvez-Valls was an experienced EMS Director, Special Event Medical Director, researcher, and educator with active memberships in ACEP, AAEM, CORD and SAEM. He established the LSU International EM program, initiating rotations across the globe. Dr. MarvezValls was an educator and mentor to paramedics, fire fighters, medical students, nurses, nurse practitioners, residents and his peers. He was recognized as the LSU EM Faculty Member of the Year and EM faculty member of the Decade. He was the consummate care provider attending to adult and pediatric patients within the Charity Hospital system. His colleagues note that Eduardo was a splendid Humanist and Philosopher with a never give up attitude. He was a fierce advocate for residents and patients, and was proof that a robust life outside medicine is essential for balance and happiness. Certainly, our specialty has been changed for the better through Dr. Eduardo MarvezValls’ contributions. He will be greatly missed. Dr. Eduardo Marvez-Valls is survived by his mother, brother, sister and life long companion, Robert Ripley.
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“to improve patient care by advancing research and education in emergency medicine” 1