Emergency medicine is a branch of medicine that is practiced in a hospital emergency department, in the field by emergency medical service operatives, such as paramedics, and other locations where initial medical treatment of illness takes place. Just as clinicians operate by immediacy rules under large emergency systems, emergency physicians base their practice on a triage system.
Emergency medicine focuses on diagnosis and treatment of acute illnesses and injuries that require immediate medical attention. While not usually providing long-term or continuous care, emergency medicine physicians and paramedics still provide care with the aim of improving long-term patient outcome. In the United States, some people use the emergency department for outpatient care that could be provided at a doctor's office. As a result, much of emergency room care is general practice (coughs, colds, aches, pains).
A variant of an Emergency Department is an Urgent Care Center, often staffed by physicians, nurses and nurse practitioners who may or may not be formally trained in emergency medicine. Urgent Care Centers offer treatment to patients who desire or require immediate care, but who do not reach the acuity that requires care in an emergency department.
Emergency Medicine encompasses a large amount of general medicine but involves virtually all fields of medicine including the surgical sub-specialties. Emergency physicians are tasked with seeing a large number of patients, treating their illnesses and arranging for disposition - either admitting them to the hospital or releasing them after treatment as necessary. The emergency physician requires a broad field of knowledge and advanced procedural skills often including surgical procedures, trauma resuscitation, advanced cardiac life support and advanced airway management. Emergency physicians ideally have the skills of many specialists, the ability to manage a difficult airway (anesthesia), suture a complex laceration (plastic surgery), treat a heart attack (internist), work-up a pregnant patient with vaginal bleeding (Obstetrics and Gynaecology), and stop a bad nosebleed (ENT).
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