A (Growing) History of the Academic Emergency Medicine Consensus Conference

Abstract

The 2010 Academic Emergency Medicine (AEM) consensus conference was the 11th in a series of conferences that grew from a vision developed by Dr. Michelle Biros, the prior editor-in-chief of the journal, which we still maintain. The editors of AEM believe that the role of medical journals goes beyond the presentation of research findings. We believe that we are in a position to generate discussion about relevant topics of academic medical concern, with the hope of stimulating research in areas where current gaps exist. With this philosophy in mind, AEM developed its first consensus conference in 2000 and has continued to offer a conference each year. The goal of the AEM consensus conference is to identify an area of emergency research and clinical need, gather thought leaders for interchange related to the current state of the art, and then develop a research agenda to advance the science. The topics presented are chosen through a competitive process and are usually (although not necessarily) developed by interest groups or committees within the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine. Eight of the 11 consensus conferences have been supported by federal funding. The conference content is published in a special issue of AEM (November in prior years, changing to December this year and going forward) and distributed electronically free of charge through the generosity of our publisher, Wiley-Blackwell. The topics that have been presented in the past and will be presented in the near future, are: 2000: Errors in emergency medicine 2001: The unraveling safety net 2002: Quality and best practices in emergency care 2003: Disparities in emergency care 2004: Information technology in emergency medicine 2005: Ethical conduct of resuscitation research 2006: The science of surge 2007: Knowledge translation 2008: Simulation in emergency medicine 2009: Public health in the emergency department: surveillance, screening, and intervention 2010: Beyond regionalization: integrated networks of emergency care 2011: Interventions to assure quality in the crowded emergency department (Boston, June 1, 2011) 2012: Education research in emergency medicine (Chicago, May 9, 2012) As detailed in the pages of this special issue, the 2010 consensus conference was an unqualified success. Nearly 150 attendees from numerous academic and nonacademic centers, federal and state agencies and elsewhere gathered in Phoenix, Arizona, to discuss a topic of growing importance to the practice of emergency medicine and to our specialty’s place in the nation’s medical care system. The first section of this issue, guest-edited by Dr. Robert Gerhardt, presents the proceedings of the conference, while the second section, guest-edited by Dr. Steven Bernstein, offers a number of original research papers on the topic of regionalization, illustrating that our specialty’s researchers are already engaged in addressing the many facets of this complex topic. It is our hope that the research agenda set forth at the conference and published here will stimulate further research efforts to address the science involved in the topic and subtopics at hand. The Society for Academic Emergency Medicine is exceedingly proud of the quality of its official journal and has fully supported the concept and execution of the annual consensus conferences. Members and nonmembers alike have benefited tremendously from the research contributions and collaborations that have resulted from this activity. We thank our funders for their generous support of the conference: the Agency for Healthcare Research and Policy, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development, the American College of Emergency Physicians, and the Emergency Department Practice Management Association, along with 11 academic departments of emergency medicine from around the country. We also thank the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine staff and the AEM editorial staff for their tireless work in bringing the consensus conference to fruition each year, and we look forward to seeing our readers at next year’s conference in Boston, Massachusetts. And finally, we thank the co-chairs of the conference, Drs. Brendan Carr and Ricardo Martinez, for coordinating the activities of numerous committees, speakers, and authors to bring our eleventh consensus conference to a successful conclusion and for ensuring that the work product presented in this issue of the Journal will be a meaningful and lasting contribution.