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(Forgive me if this has been discussed before - I can't remember) An interesting post was put on the (mainly american) pediatric (sic) emergency medicine mailing list which I've pasted below, concerning the inappropriateness of demanding that a qualified emergency physician be currently certified in PALS. I feel that if 5 years of registrar training do not equip someone with the skills and knowledge required of an ALS provider, we're doing something seriously wrong, and I would even extend that to cover ATLS and APLS. So should the Faculty take a similar stance to the American College against such 'merit badging'. It's perhaps fair enough to expect interested SHOs to have these courses behind them before embarking in higher specialist emergency medicine training, but should they then be expected to re-certify or re-do courses at considerable expense (unless of course they want to be instructors), when there are plenty of other good courses to spend a limited study leave budget on? I realise for those of us who are instructors it's less relevant, but nevertheless I can't help feeling my training is being undermined when A&E consultant job ads require both a CCST in emergency medicine and 'current ALS & ATLS certification'. Anyone know the Australasian College's position on this, particularly as APLS is pretty hard to get onto for the folks over here? Cheers Cliff Reid Australia (I wonder if Adrian's still up!) as you know, the American College of Emergency Physicians has taken a stand against merit badging in emergency medicine. Meaning that if a physician is board certified in emergency medicine, he or she should not be required by a hospital to also have a current PALS, BLS, ACLS, or ATLS card. Obviously if an emergency medicine physician only knows what is taught in PALS for example, then he or she sucks as an emergency physician. For years our program has been giving our new EM residents a PALS course when they start their residency which does have some basic peds resuscitation info that is good. Recently we altered the course to be more a Pediatric Critical Care day. They receive skills stations and lectures including additional ones on pediatric seizures and more in-depth respiratory cases. We've used the slides from the AAP/ACEP APLS course which are much better than the PALS slides. For those of us who would rather die than teach another PALS class, this beefed up course was a nice change. What are residencies doing about graduating residents who are asking to be re-certified in PALS because "their cards expired". Their new jobs are asking for current PALS cards. If we "recertify" them, and give them cards, this just perpetuates the hospitals to ask again for current cards. When is the cycle going to stop? How do we stop the madness? _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp