AEMV President's 2012 Letter - Dr. Joerg Mayer DIPL-ABVP

Dear Colleagues,

I guess the New Year is already here and it is time to reflect on 2011. I hope that the past year has been successful and peaceful for you.

AEMV continues to grow and establish itself as a major specialty organization of our great profession. We were able to provide our members with an excellent conference in Seattle and we have received great reviews of the meeting, so thanks to all of you who attended and gave feedback. The conference was a venue to get your CE credits, to learn about new and interesting clinical problems, to prepare for the boards with master classes and of course to socialize with friends and colleagues. The atmosphere was great and I am always amazed what a great variety of personalities are part of our organization. I was also impressed how many international conference attendees were present at the meeting and I am sure they all thought that the trip was worth the investment in time and money.

With small mammals still on the continued rise in the pet industry, keeping up with new and novel treatments or diseases is more important than ever before. I think our organization is already very successful in core parts of our mission.

To generate and distribute new knowledge is truly at the core of AEMV and we are very happy that we were able to sponsor our first research project with $5000. The donation was funded by the sale of the sympathy cards we created, the generosity of individual donors, and a portion of membership dues goes into the Research Fund. I hope you agree this is a solid and great use of your membership fees in addition to receiving the Journal of Exotic Pet Medicine. The result of the project will be presented at an upcoming meeting and you will directly benefit from gaining new and relevant knowledge.

Another great success is the fact that we have 3 new board certified exotic companion mammal specialists among us bringing the total to 13 since the first exam in 2009. A clear sign that that the field of experts is growing and that there is demand in our profession and from the general public. If you have been treating lots of small mammals in your clinic or if you think that you will need to increase the caseload, I strongly urge you to contact one of the existing Dipl. ABVP (ECM) and ask them how their experience in obtaining the specialist status was, I am sure you will find these colleagues very helpful in answering your questions and helping you to get motivated to sit for the exam.

Regarding distributing information to the community, I am very happy to announce that our official ranking of JEPM increased significantly in the Journal Citation Reports® 2011, published by Thomson Reuters, showed that the impact factor (0.359) has increased by nearly 68% over 2009. The journal is currently ranked 100 out of 145 qualified veterinary journals by impact factor. The higher impact score will help to recruit renowned authors and researchers to publish their scientific contributions in our print media outlet, again this is a direct benefit for our members.

We are also updating the website and will have the call for papers for the 2012 conference on the site very soon. If you are not receiving your regular electronic newsletters please contact us at info@aemv.org so we can resolve the issue.

As you can see the board of AEMV has continued work on improving and implementing the core principles and in short I feel that it is well worth to be a member of this organization. While all these accomplishments are a great achievement the journey will continue to make this an even better organization.

At our yearly conference in Oakland I will officially step down as the President but I will remain active on the board to help to make sure the improvements continue, as we grow bigger and stronger as an organization. Again, this is an area where you can directly help to steer the course of the development, please think of running for an office or helping out on a committee, this is where your ideas will transform into actions.

We hope to see you in Oakland in 2012 for our joined meeting with AAZV and ARAV.

I sincerely wish you a great and successful 2012.

Dr. Joerg Mayer
President, AEMV

mayerj@uga.edu

Copyright 2012 Association of Exotic Mammal Veterinarians. All rights reserved.