July 24 was not an ordinary day for all of us who care about Emergency Medicine in Pakistan. We got the news of six Physicians’s passing FCPS in Emergency Medicine examination and becoming FCPS in Emergency Medicine. For them it was quite a tough journey that ended in unique prestige of becoming the initial few to be locally trained. Similarly for the training programs and for the teachers and supervisors it represented an important milestone in the struggle of emergency medicine in Pakistan.
Since 2011 when college of physicians and surgeons recognized emergency medicine as training specialty, the struggle started to establish training of Emergency Medicine in emergency departments of all hospitals of Pakistan whether private or public. The struggle revolves around changing the mindset of working in the emergency departments. The old school of thought is still prevalent with segregated teams working side-by-side and the concept of casualty medical officer shunting the patient after labeling them medical or surgical patients.
With only two training centers for FCPS we began our journey and now about 10 centers are there to do the training. It is mostly collective efforts of the institutions and supervisors but I have to give credit to all trainees who believed in the dream of emergency medicine and followed the path that was not very clear at the time of induction and still is blurred at places. These trainees of yesterday are now becoming the trained physicians of today, and by the same token will be supervisors of tomorrow. They will all be running the affairs of emergency medicine and will make changes in the system that their own teachers tried and could not succeed.
To all graduating doctors and the junior consultants, my best advice would be to never give up on dreams. The path of better emergency care is long and the goal is difficult but collectively the journey is still worthwhile and interesting. The number of FCPS in EM have reached 15, and the stream is slowly becoming thick. In very short period of time we will have a critical mass that is needed to change the status quo of emergency medical care in Pakistan. What will happen after that depends upon all of us, the trainees of today, the government, the hospitals, the supervisors and teachers of trainees and of course the most important of all the patients who come to be seen in the emergency department. We all have to come on the same page and develop the emergency departments on the line of making them safe, accessible and of excellent quality. May Allah be with us all in this struggle and make it happen.