Sleep Medicine from EM update

[miacomet]

Hi all!

I finally chatted with ABEM re: Sleep Medicine, and this was their not-very-helpful response. It can be done, mainly WE NEED NUMBERS. If ANYONE WANTS TO JOIN MY EMAIL LIST THEN PLEASE DM ME AND I WILL ADD YOU TO MY EMAIL LIST.

Hi Dr. ---



I wanted to send you a brief overview of our meeting on Tuesday. It was a lot of information so I thought it may be helpful to have.



New subspecialties and FPDs are driven by the community, not the member boards. The ABEM Board ultimately makes the decision whether to pursue qualifying status in Sleep Medicine.



Step 1. Showing the Level of Interest

· Suggested: Start a Sleep Medicine section with ACEP and/or AAEM

o ACEP website has option to apply for new section

· Suggested: Find the number of EM physicians who are US Sleep Medicine society members



Step 2. Becoming a Qualifying Board

· If the number of interested EM physicians justifies the inclusion of ABEM as a qualifying board, then ABEM would consider whether to apply to ABIM & ABMS.

· Timing considerations – It would be a minimum of two years before ABEM would have the capacity to consider offering Sleep Medicine as a subspecialty



Step 3. Completing ACGME Fellowship-Because practice track has closed, to become certified you need to complete a fellowship. As it is now, completion of a fellowship has no pathway forward for you to get certified, unless the ABEM Board becomes a participating Board. If you decide to start a fellowship, you are encouraged to contact ABEM to update as to level of interest in EM (ACEP section etc) and allow ABEM to think about what steps it might wish to take, if any, to see if there would be a pathway for certification. All of this at this time is unknown.

· Program Director would need to write to ABEM and request it seek qualifying board status

· Traditional 1 year Sleep Medicine fellowship

· ACGME-accredited fellowships can apply to become an AIRE program



Please let me know if you have any questions. I am happy to help.



Samantha Roe (she/her/hers)
Subspecialties Specialist

American Board of Emergency Medicine

517.332.4800 ext. 332

[email protected]

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[TrailRun]

I was just thinking about this post during a run. Thats so frustrating. I wonder if you could just self study for a bit and just open your own clinic? I imagine the liability in a field like sleep is exceedingly low. If NP and PA can do it then why not. This entire movement in medicine to add more years of fellowship and sub specialization (without taking years off the front end like undergrad or preclinical) is so unfortunate, especially because alternative quicker pathways are available for midlevels.

 

[Just D.O. it]

I was just thinking about this post during a run. Thats so frustrating. I wonder if you could just self study for a bit and just open your own clinic? I imagine the liability in a field like sleep is exceedingly low. If NP and PA can do it then why not. This entire movement in medicine to add more years of fellowship and sub specialization (without taking years off the front end like undergrad or preclinical) is so unfortunate, especially because alternative quicker pathways are available for midlevels.

You can practice the clinical management of sleep apnea and insomnia, but that’s within the scope of primary care anyway. The point of the fellowship is to qualify you to read sleep studies and potentially be medical director at a sleep lab both of which you will not be reimbursed or hired for unless you are BE/BC sleep medicine.