Summer 2013: From the President Larry Slaughter, MD, FACEP

POSTED: September 6th, 2013
POSTED IN: Summer 2013,

One of my goals as president of the Missouri College of Emergency Physicians was to visit the residency programs in the state during my tenure. I had the opportunity on June 4th to speak to the residents at St. Louis University and Washington University about advocacy. The conference was entitled Current Concepts in Emergency Medicine and had a range of topics that were presented for the residents. Kene Chukwuanu is a resident at St. Louis University and did a presentation concerning getting involved in EMRA. Ed Ferguson presented his experience as a community doctor who started a democratic group in St. Louis. Dr. Gursahani did a presentation challenging the residents to think about the practice of medicine in the context of it being a business. Alex Garza, who is the chief medical officer of Homeland Security, did a great presentation on different career experiences that he had had working in the government and the military. Finally, my presentation provided some basics of how to get involved and what to do when you have the opportunity to speak to your legislator.

My goal was to pique the interest of the residents and hopefully help them get involved in the College. I gave some basic information about arranging a visit with your legislator, prepping for that visit, and following up. The talk seemed to be fairly well received and my hope would be that some of the residents would join us in January for our visits to the legislature in Jefferson City.

I also scheduled a talk to the residents at Truman Medical Center in Kansas City where I will present more information about getting involved. Again, our hope would be to get more residents involved in the process which I think strengthens their education and dedication to the practice of emergency medicine.

In the process of preparing for these talks, I had to ask myself why I had gotten involved in MoCEP. I actually came up with a number of reasons. The first being that I found that although I enjoyed medicine, I felt the need to be involved in my profession in other ways besides just seeing patients. In that regard my work with MoCEP has brought some balance to my life and work. MoCEP also allows me to give back to the profession which has been so good to me. Along those lines, I challenged the residents to think about giving back to the profession by getting involved. And finally, I thought of something that one of our board members had said about being involved in the board which I think is very insightful. Sebastian Rueckert talks about when he is working in the emergency department he affects one patient at a time. The contrast is the work he does on the board which can affect populations. The Board’s work to prevent the repeal of the mandatory motorcycle helmet law is a great example of work that has prevented untold head injuries and deaths.

The Board is working on a number of projects that would benefit from your involvement. Please contact me if you would like to be involved.