EDs play a crucial role as frontline health services throughout public health emergencies, including pandemics. The strength of the Australian public health response to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) has mitigated the impact of the pandemic on clinical services, but there has still been a substantial impact on EDs and the health system. We revisit major events and lessons from the first wave of COVID‐19 in Australia to consider the implications and avenues for system‐level improvements for future pandemic and public health emergency response for EDs. Notwithstanding, the remarkable efforts of healthcare workers across the health system, COVID‐19 has uncovered structural and planning challenges and highlighted weaknesses and strengths of the Australian federation. In anticipating future pandemics and other public health threats, particularly in the face of climate change, hard‐won lessons from the COVID‐19 response should be incorporated in future planning, policies, practice and advocacy.
The challenge of addressing gender inequality was highlighted in the 2016 Trainee Focus of Emergency Medicine Australasia. Despite increasing numbers of female medical graduates, including increasing female trainees in emergency medicine (EM), this has not yet translated to equal representation in formal leadership roles. Five years later, as the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM) welcomes the second female college president, this article explores the gendered leadership gap in EM from an organisational and intersectional feminist perspective and recommends high-level strategies for change. Notably, ACEM has demonstrated committed engagement with gender equity, such as the establishment of the Advancing Women in Emergency Section. It has also achieved gender parity in provisional trainees and improved women's representation on the ACEM Board. However, broader organisational processes that ensure work-life integration, transparent leadership development pathways and equitable recruitment, promotion, retention and evaluation remain critical. Creating a local evidencebase to support diversity in leadership development remains a priority.
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