1. Increase Diversity Interest group’s membership.  Each member to recruit 2-3 members to the section
2. Identify Best Practices in medical mentorship at all levels
3. Create and distribute a list of URM EM faculty in Academic Institutions for distribution to interest group members
4. Become actively involved of DIG in SAEM’s Virtual Advisor program. Request an identifier for URM
5. Participate and become active in all SAEM committees and intere3st groups.
6. Put forth proposal to SAEM program committee from DIG.
7. Create several didactic proposals for SAEM 2008:  Possible topics:
   1. Best Practices for URM recruitment 
   2. Implementing the CCTF monograph
   3. Impact of standardized examination on successful recruitment of URM’s to EM
8. Engage in AGENDA of EMRA
9. Attend/recruit at SNMA and Hispanic medical student organization meetings on national and regional level.

 

Join this Interest Group

Audio Highlights from the 2007 Medical Student Symposium


The following items were developed by the Undergraduate Education Committee and the Diversity Interest Group.

 

Diversity Brochure

 

Diversity Profiles

 

Diversity Video

 

 

---

 

 

Emergency Medicine Represented at the SNMA Annual Meeting

 

The specialty of Emergency Medicine (EM) was well-represented at the Student National Medical Association’s (SNMA) Annual Medical Education Conference at San Francisco during April 4-8, 2007. SNMA is a national organization with a membership of over 5,000 minority medical students, pre-medical students, residents, and physicians. The mission of SNMA is to be committed to mentoring under-represented minority students, addressing the needs of underserved communities and increasing the number of culturally conscious and clinically excellent physicians. Currently, African-American and Hispanic medical school graduates comprise only 6.5% and 6.4%, respectively, of all graduates. This annual meeting is the largest meeting of minority medical students and pre-medical students in the United States, focusing on networking and educational workshops to nurture and promote the future leaders in medicine. 

 

The EM recruitment booth, hosted by the Council of Residency Directors (CORD), was one of only a few specialties represented at the meeting.  The EM representatives and recruitment material reflected the cross-collaboration of various EM institutions and organizations. There was tremendous interest in EM amongst the pre-medical and medical students, in large part from the enthusiasm of our EM representatives – Drs. Ruby Long, Summa Health System EM resident; Cheryl McBride, San Jose-O’Connor Hospital Sports Medicine fellow; Cherie Hargis and Jocelyn Garrick, Highland General Hospital; and Tanisha Pelletier, Ehsan Shirazi, and Michelle Lin, San Francisco General Hospital. 

 

In addition to receiving individual mentorship and advice at the booth, students learned about and collected material from various EM organizations. This included SAEM brochures on the importance of diversity in the Emergency Department, the EMRA newsletter and various educational materials, and ACEP recruitment materials. Further, the students were able to view the recently completed SAEM video on Diversity in Emergency Medicine, which was produced by the SAEM Undergraduate Education Committee and highlighted interviews with various prominent minority EM faculty across the country. 

 

As a specialty, we should continue to invest our time and efforts towards attracting more under-represented medical students into EM. Increasing the representation of racial and ethnic minorities in our field will help address the disparities in health care by expanding approaches to patient care and providing a better understanding of cultural competence in the Emergency Department.

 

Emergency Medicine booth at the 2007 SNMA annual meeting, represented by (l to r) Drs. Ruby Long, Cherie Hargis, Ehsan Shirazi, and Michelle Lin.