Are You Board Certified in Family or Internal Medicine and Working in the Emergency Room?
If you are board certified in family or internal medicine and have spent your career working in the emergency room of your hospital, you might be interested to know that you may be eligible to pursue board certification in emergency medicine through the American Board of Physician Specialties®. We recognize that many of our country’s talented physicians work in the emergency department to fill a need within their community, even though they received their training in a different specialty. These men and women are highly trained physicians and deserve to be recognized for their accumulated medical experience, and thanks to the ABPS and the Board of Certification in Emergency Medicine®, they can.
Board certification has long been used by prospective patients as a helpful tool for identifying highly qualified physicians. However, in recent years, employers have begun to prioritize hiring physician specialists with board certification as well. In fact, many hospital groups and insurance companies require that their physician employees be board certified in the specialty they practice. This is extremely troublesome for emergency department physicians who completed their residencies in a field other than emergency medicine, as it could have a profound impact on their future employment opportunities and eligibility for advancement.
To address this problem, the BCEM offers board certification to physicians who have:
- Successfully completed an AOA or ACGME residency in a primary care specialty
- Accumulated a minimum of 7,000 hours of certifiable work in an emergency department over a five-year time period
- Met all of our other eligibility requirements for board certification
If you are a physician who has spent your career working in the emergency room of your hospital, you deserve the opportunity to pursue board certification in your area of expertise to demonstrate to your peers, employers, and patients that you have mastered the specialty in addition to family or internal medicine. Contact us today to learn more about your options. The ABPS is the official board certifying body of the American Association of Physician Specialists, Inc.®