To the Editor,
In order to sustainably pursue the mission of the European Resuscitation Council (ERC) of ‘preserving life by making high quality resuscitation available to all’,1, 2 it is essential to build a strong next generation of resuscitation leaders.3 Therefore, the Young ERC was founded in 2017 to support the growth of early-career members in the resuscitation community.4 The foundation of the Young ERC has been described previously.4 Meanwhile, the Young ERC has taken significant steps by developing novel initiatives, providing continuous peer-engagement and extending its involvement in established ERC structures.5, 6, 7 However, to prioritize future actions, it is important to understand the needs of early-career members. We aim to describe the results of the Young ERC survey and highlight recent initiatives and outline the vision for future priorities of the Young ERC.
The Young ERC survey was conducted as an online survey among Young ERC newsletter recipients and social media followers between November 2022 and April 2023. The survey comprised 24 questions, including two open-ended questions, assessing respondent demographics and perceptions of current and future Young ERC activities. We obtained 91 responses from survey participants of those 68 (75%) identified as male, 76 (84%) were between 18 and 39 years old, and 76 (84%) resided in a European country. Primary occupation was as follows: 42 (46%) physicians, 23 (25%) students, 12 (13%) paramedics or emergency medical technicians, 6 (7%) nurses and 8 (9%) other professions. When asking about future priorities for Young ERC initiatives 67 (74%) of respondents indicated that the development of a resuscitation science masterclass was important to them. Additionally, the development of a mentorship program and networking initiatives was ranked as important by 60 (66%) and 72 (79%) of respondents, respectively.
Based on the results, the Young ERC has developed several initiatives. In September 2023 we piloted the Resuscitation Science Masterclass to provide training and networking opportunities for future resuscitation scientists.7 With the support from the ERC Board, individual resuscitation science experts and Resuscitation Plus, we will continue the masterclass in 2024 with plans for further expansion of this initiative in the future. Further, a mentoring project is under development designed to address the specific needs of early-career individuals. The range of activities and initiatives that the Young ERC has launched in collaboration with the ERC and Resuscitation Plus are described in Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Overview Young European Resuscitation Council contributions. Abbreviations: European Resuscitation Council (ERC), Future Innovations in Resuscitation Science and Technology (F.I.R.S.T.).
Going forward, the Young ERC Committee will expand its effort to support early-career individuals globally by scaling up existing Young ERC projects and by developing novel initiatives that enable active participation. Furthermore, the Young ERC Committee will work towards building a productive network with the existing National Resuscitation Councils’ early-career groups and support the formation of such groups on a national level to facilitate early integration of trainees and students into the larger ERC community. Overall, the Young ERC aspires to serve as a catalyst for the next generation of the resuscitation community which may support the continuous and sustainable advancement of resuscitation science and practice.
Funding
No funding obtained.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Anna Bichmann: Conceptualization, Project administration, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Johannes Wittig: Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Conceptualization. Kasper Glerup Lauridsen: Conceptualization, Project administration, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Jessica Rogers: Conceptualization, Project administration, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: AB is the Immediate Past Chair of the Young ERC. JW serves as the Chair of the Young ERC. KGL serves as Young ERC Committee Advisor, is the Young ERC Resuscitation Plus Editor, is a member of the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation Task Force on Education, Implementation, and Teams and a member of the ERC Science and Education Committee on Advanced Life Support. JR serves as Young ERC Committee Advisor and is the Past Chair of the Young ERC.
Acknowledgement
We thank the current and past Young ERC Committee members, Enrico Baldi, Sanin Bilic, Jacqueline Eleonora Ek, Ahmed Elshaer, Alessandro Fasolino, Maria Georgiou, Cristina Jorge-Soto, Vlasios Karageorgos, Roshani Karunarathne, Bernhard Kowalski, Cecilie Langkilde Lauesen, Franziska Markel, Adam Mellet-Smith, Aditi Nijhawan, Laura Margarete Schmidt, Sebastian Schnaubelt, Shaun Theodor Florentz Sødergren, Anastasia Spartinou, Kaushila Thilakasiri and Christoph Veigl for their many efforts and dedicated volunteer service which are essential to advancing our common goals. We thank the ERC Board members, the ERC office staff, the Editorial Board members of the Resuscitation plus Journal and the many senior members of the international resuscitation community for their support of the Young ERC activities.
References
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