Recert Redux

Year 2000. I’m sitting in a semi-fancy hotel ballroom near LAX along with several hundred slightly edgy Emergency Physicians. We’re all awaiting the start of our ABEM written re-certification examination. This was in the old-school days of live exams. We had an MD Master of Ceremonies, a famous EM leader; and I can still remember his message to the assemblage. “If you’re re-certing for the first time, welcome, relax, good luck and you’ll do fine.” (His recognition, that I was young enough to remember some of what I’d learned in residency, was heartening and slowed my palpitating, somewhat. Plus, I’d studied.) He continued…smiling…