CCMS-AAEM Section Council Election

My name is Ally Hynes. I’m currently a third-year faculty member at the University of New Mexico after completing my CC fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. I am writing to apply for the chair-elect position. I was honored to serve as a section councilor then secretary for AAEM and my interest is driven by a desire to contribute to the developing specialty. I have a firm belief that the added training in critical care supplements an EM resident’s education by delivering a wide breadth of academic, clinical, and procedural expertise. EM-CC-trained physicians add tremendous value to both the ED and the healthcare network as we serve as content experts and we have a unique skillset that allows us to work throughout the entire healthcare system. I want to build on the work of those before me to expand our numbers and our influence within the greater community.

Throughout my time here at AAEM, I have enjoyed mentoring trainees through the mentorship program, which is a program that I direct, serving as a core faculty member in the residents/medical students critical care boot camp, and serving as a panelist on various webinars. Additionally, I think it is important to disseminate the cutting-edge literature, which I accomplished by helping organize the CC Practice Changing Articles session.

I’m more than equipped to serve as chair-elect. Administratively, I served as the Surgical Critical Care Chief Administrative Fellow during my fellowship. I have served as an EMRA’s CC Vice Chair, Website/Social Media Editor then as the Scientific Assembly Programming Chair, and as a UPENN EMRA Delegate. Throughout my training and now as faculty, I have personally benefitted from the mentorship and efforts of our section members before me, and I hope to continue to pay it forward. Thanks for your time and your consideration.

My name is Frederick Gmora. I am a junior attending within the Jefferson Health Network, splitting time between the ED and ICU. I served as the critical care medicine fellowship education curriculum director at Jefferson Northeast and will be transitioning to Assistant Program Director at Jefferson New Jersey. I completed critical care medicine fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, after a combined emergency medicine/internal medicine residency. I have had the pleasure to serve as a councilor for the last two terms. Over the several years, I have had the opportunity to plan and organize the Scientific Assembly Breveloquent competitions, help continue the CCMS mentorship program, and publish in Common Sense with other leaders in the CCMS. I have been a member of the CCMS for the last several years both as a resident and fellow. Attending regular section meetings has afforded the opportunity to meet motivated and passionate leaders in the field of EM critical care, participate in multiple webinars, and speak on a national level.

Within critical care my interests are advanced airway and ventilator management, procedural competency, and multi-disciplinary collaboration particularly related to palliative and end of life care. Outside of critical care, I have a particular interest in medical education, mentorship, and physician mental health.

As CCMS secretary/finance chair I hope to aid the chair and chair elect to advance critical care interest and knowledge among medical students, residents, and the emergency medicine community at large through the collaboration with the RSA and other intensivists across specialties.

Emergency medicine critical care is a vibrant and rapidly growing community. I believe my diverse training background and passion for education make me an ideal candidate to serve the AAEM Critical Care Medicine Section.

Thank you for your consideration,
Frederick Gmora, DO FAAEM

Hello, my name is Lindsay Ritter and I am a board certified emergency medicine and critical care physician. I did my training and critical care fellowship at the University of Maryland Medical Center and currently work as a surgical critical care intensivist with shifts in the emergency department at Washington Hospital Center in Washington, DC. I am looking to fulfill the role of councilor for the critical care medicine section as I am very interested in helping to create a smooth marriage between emergency medicine and critical care. Much of the critical care and resuscitation we do upstairs in the ICU starts in the emergency room, so it is crucial that practices be aligned. I am hoping to accomplish creating a central location for up-to-date literature on critical care focused emergency medicine, as well as a collection of guidelines. In addition, I am also interested in helping emergency medicine residents become interested in critical care and to pursue the critical care fellowship in order to give them more flexibility with their career, especially as emergency medicine changes with the current constraints and burn out rates increase. I am looking forward to assisting the chair of the group with any tasks that need to be accomplished.

Currently I am an emergency medicine and surgical critical care fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and would be honored to serve as a councilor on the AAEM Critical Care Medicine Section. I have been fortunate to have excellent and substantial experiences with critical care and emergency medicine at my residency at Albany Medical Center. Prior to coming to Penn, I completed a 1-year trauma critical care fellowship at Shock Trauma as well. I also served over nine years, and counting, with the Army National Guard as a physician. My past experiences have offered a unique and exceptional exposure to multiple areas of resuscitative, surgical, and trauma critical care. I would be excited to join the critical care medicine section to continue my commitment to academic medicine, advocating for new trainees, and shaping our subspecialty forward into a growing field. As a relatively new subspeciality, there are opportunities to engage more prospective residents and current fellows to support their education and career prospects within the various disciplines of critical care. As a councilor on CCMS, I will work hard toward engaging more trainees to ensure better mentorship and resources to successfully emerge into the critical care field. I will also engage with other professional societies to promote the inclusion and collaboration of emergency medicine intensivists. Societal outreach and advocacy for our unique, critical care training would help solidify our inclusion from national engagement down to hospital divisions who traditionally may not have employed emergency medicine intensivists. Combining better mentorship and societal partnerships would ensure a stronger emergency medicine-critical care field for better career opportunities, stronger relationships, and pathways to ongoing growth.

I would like to nominate myself for the position of Councilor for the AAEM-CCMS section. As a rising emergency medicine senior, my passion for critical care has grown and I am looking to pursue fellowship to further grow my knowledge in this field. Over the course of the last year, I have been regularly attending section meetings and looking forward to all of the clinical discussions and having the chance to dissect the nuances in management of a variety of pathologies.

Throughout my life, I’ve had the privilege of leading various groups, whether in school, in sports, or in the workplace. These experiences have taught me invaluable lessons in advocating for others.  I truly believe this background makes me a dependable candidate for Councilor. I have had the opportunity to do that at some levels during residency in the form of school outreach programs, Stop the Bleed education, and recruitment efforts.

If elected into this position, I would like to increase recruitment initiatives, hoping to have more residents join us in monthly meetings. I am hoping that more residents can learn and be encouraged in the ways I have been so far. With this in mind, I was recently inspired by conversations during one of the monthly meetings. As a result, I reached out to the hospital I am a resident at about implementing different ways to reach out to my community. One of our early initiatives is to reach out to local shelters to help provide training in basic first aid and Narcan use. If elected, I would be eager to spread these initiatives, setting up pathways to allow other members to implement these programs in their communities.

My name is Oluwafemi Owodunni, a first-year EM resident at the University of New Mexico, and alumnus of The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health with an MPH. My academic journey has led to authoring over 40 peer-reviewed articles in prominent journals and have presented work to numerous national and international organizations.

Being part of CCMS-AAEM has been a pivotal chapter in my professional life. The resources available, like the enlightening article “The Future of Fluid Resuscitation in Critically Ill Patients is Here. Or is It?” have deepened my understanding of critical care as a resident and have transformed my bedside care. The invaluable opportunities for networking, learning and collaboration available in CCMS-AAEM are noteworthy. I have personally benefited from mentorship, especially from the current mentorship program director and CCMS-AAEM secretary, Dr. Hynes, who has refined my clinical acumen and patient-centered care approach.

As a member committed to the AAEM community, my vision for the CCMS-AAEM involves leveraging my background and contributing to our Clinical Practice Statements. I intend to contribute to a research mentorship initiative for medical students and residents, fostering an inclusive culture of inquiry and innovation, where I can use my skillset to contribute to the AAEM common sense articles or the critical care hacks.

I am committed to upholding and advancing the standards of excellence set by CCMS-AAEM, aiming to broaden our community’s impact and elevate our educational endeavors, particularly at the Scientific Assembly. I am more than equipped to serve the section, as I have served as the Vice President of my medical school student body and as the Vice President of the John B Grant Public Health Society during my academic master’s pursuit. Having personally benefitted from AAEM, it is my hope that more trainees can also benefit from this community.

I nominated myself because I am interested in critical care within the emergency department. I would like to bridge the gap between intensive care and the Emergency department. I have always had a passion for critical care and hope to one day pursue a fellowship. I believe that I would be able to contribute knowledge as I move through residency and hope to make positive changes in the EM critical care world.

My name is Joshua Culberson and I am a medical student at the University of Central Florida College of Medicine. I am nominating myself for consideration to be the next RSA Representative. I became interested in Emergency Medicine in high school when my Dad got out of the Army and started flying a Life Flight helicopter for hospitals all throughout the Southeast. I was fortunate to be able to spend time around his medical team, had the chance to shadow their medical director and fell in love with this aspect of Emergency Medicine. I have various interests within the field and have taken leadership at my institution as the Co-President of our Critical Care Medicine Interest Group. I have been looking for ways to become more involved with AAEM and feel as though I would be a good fit for the position. I have experience organizing large events and am eager to ensure that this next year is full of networking and mentorship opportunities that help those in this section thrive.

I would like to nominate myself for the RSA representative, because I would like to join my physician colleagues in articulating the direction for the future of our profession while learning more about the inner workings of AAEM.

Prior to medical school, I was a firefighter/EMT and subsequently a physician assistant in emergency medicine. As a PA, I was witness to the negative changes in emergency medicine that many members of AAEM are well aware.

I have worked for large private equity owned contract management groups as a warm body to fill a shift as well as a small democratic group where I had a real partnership with my supervising physicians where we together shared responsibility for the patient.

Ultimately, recognizing the gaps in my knowledge, I returned to medical school where I am in my first year. I hope to come out equipped to better care for my patients, but also to better care for my profession through avenues such as AAEM.