Are Your Hospital’s Emergency Physicians Board Certified in Emergency Medicine?
At the Board of Certification in Emergency Medicine – a Member Board of the American Board of Physician Specialties® – we strongly encourage physicians who have made their careers working in the emergency room to consider pursuing board certification. Increasingly, employers, insurers, and other decision makers are prioritizing – if not outright mandating – the hiring of board certified physicians, which is why it’s so important to make the commitment to earning this distinction. Additionally, prospective patients know that board certification is a trusted indicator that a physician is a recognized expert in the field of emergency medicine. If a competing hospital is staffed by board certified physicians and yours is not, patients will take notice.
Yet, one of the problems that many hospitals – particularly rural hospitals – run into is that their emergency rooms are staffed by the available physicians, not necessarily those who have formal residency training in Emergency Medicine. Often, family physicians and other primary care providers step up to fill the need of the community and work in the ER, even though that wasn’t originally their intended career plan. The issue that these highly experienced physicians can run into, though, is that they aren’t technically eligible to pursue board certification in Emergency Medicine because they didn’t complete residency training in the field.
At the BCEM, we want to offer these highly qualified individuals the chance to become board certified. That’s why we allow our physician candidates to qualify two different ways. To be considered, candidates are required to have either completed a residency in Emergency Medicine or to have practiced Emergency Medicine for a minimum of five years on a fulltime basis while accumulating a minimum of 7,000 hours of ER time in that same period, and also have completed a residency in one of the following disciplines:
- Family Practice
- Internal Medicine
- Pediatric Medicine
- General Surgery
So, ask yourself, are the physicians who work in your ER board certified in Emergency Medicine? If not, it’s important to know that they have options through the BCEM. To learn more about our organization the eligibility requirements to apply, and the benefits to board certification, contact us today. The ABPS is the official certifying body of the American Association of Physician Specialists, Inc.®