Where we've been, where we are, and where we're going: emergency medicine--past, present, and future

The challenge to emergency medicine for the future is to maintain the intensity of attraction and appeal that the specialty currently enjoys through the next decade and beyond. This will only be accomplished by attracting some of this bright young talent into full-time academic emergency medicine for research and teaching activities. Currently there are unfilled academic positions in the department at LAC/USC Medical Center and across the country in emergency medicine. This is because the salaries are not competitive, and most physicians completing their residencies with indebtedness for their education have the need of high income for a period after residency training. However, few return to academic medicine after becoming accustomed to a higher standard of living. This trend must change if we are to maintain the cutting edge of clinical emergency medicine and become the academic equivalent of the other specialties. The 12 physicians who founded ABEM, and especially the remaining six founding members who will be leaving the Board in a few days, feel honored that you selected us to serve. I am deeply grateful that you selected me to give the Kennedy Lecture, though I must admit to moments of anxiety and panic these last few weeks and days. Also, I would like to thank all the candidates for Board certification whom it was my privilege to examine during a delicate and stressful moment of their professional lives. It is really they who make the job worthwhile. Hopefully, we have laid a good foundation so that we can legitimately say the "ball" is yours now, "run with it."