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EPs Gain Access to Critical Care Certification
By: MARY ELLEN SCHNEIDER, Internal Medicine News Digital Network
Emergency physicians now have a pathway for earning board certification in critical care medicine under an arrangement approved by the American Board of Medical Specialties.
At the end of September, the ABMS board of directors approved a plan to allow emergency physicians to be board certified in critical care medicine through a pathway cosponsored by the American Board of Emergency Medicine (ABEM) and the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM). The arrangement allows emergency physicians with additional training in critical care medicine to take advantage of the existing certification available through the ABIM.
Residents in emergency medicine who are interested in critical care medicine board certification would need to meet additional requirements that include 6 months of general internal medicine training. Three months of that training would need to be in an internal medicine–critical care medicine unit.
"I think in the past it’s been quite risky to do a fellowship not knowing if you’ll ever be board certified."
Emergency medicine residents who accomplish this additional training could be accepted into a 2-year internal medicine–critical care medicine fellowship program. Completion of that program will allow them to sit for the ABIM’s critical care medicine certification exam, according to the ABIM.
Emergency medicine residents will be eligible to enter critical care medicine fellowships in July 2012, said Dr. William F. Iobst, vice president of academic affairs at the ABIM. The certification pathway is available for critical care medicine only, not pulmonary critical care medicine, he said.
Emergency physicians who have already trained in an accredited 2-year critical care medicine program, under the umbrella of general surgery, anesthesia, or internal medicine, are eligible to sit for the ABIM critical care certification exam under a "grandfather" provision. These "grandfathered" physicians need to provide documentation that they spend a significant amount of their clinical time in critical care units. The "grandfather" option is expected to be available for 5 years, Dr. Iobst said.
"It’s an opportunity to recognize that there are a certain number of people who have been doing this who have not been eligible to seek certification," Dr. Iobst said. "The real goal here is to ensure that people are meeting a standard and can demonstrate that they are meeting a standard of practice."
Efforts to allow emergency physicians access to some type of U.S. board certification in critical care medicine have been underway for years. Prior to this agreement, the only option open to emergency physicians who completed a critical care medicine fellowship was certification through the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine.
As early as 2006, leaders in internal medicine and emergency medicine began meeting to come up with another option for these physicians. In March 2009, a task force of physicians from the ABIM and the ABEM held a day-long meeting and unanimously agreed that the two boards should cosponsor a critical care medicine subspecialty certification pathway for emergency physicians.
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