An emergency physician is a physician who works at an emergency department to care for acutely ill patients. The emergency physician is a specialist in advanced cardiac life support (advanced life support in Europe), trauma care such as fractures and soft tissue injuries, and management of other life-threatening situations.
In some European countries (e.g. Germany, Poland, Austria and Denmark), emergency physicians are also part of the emergency medical service and are dispatched together with EMTs and paramedics in cases of potentially life-threatening situations for patients (heart attacks, serious accidents, resuscitations or unconsciousness, strokes, drug overdoses, etc.). In the United States, emergency physicians are mostly hospital-based, but they often work on air ambulances and mobile intensive-care units.
When a patient is brought into the emergency department, he or she is usually sent to triage first. The patient may be triaged by an emergency physician, a paramedic, or a nurse; in the United States, triage is usually performed by a registered nurse. If the patient is admitted to the hospital, another physician such as a cardiologist or neurologist takes over from the emergency physician.
Famous quotes containing the words emergency and/or physician:
“In this country, you never pull the emergency brake, even when there is an emergency. It is imperative that the trains run on schedule.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)
“God bless the physician who warms the speculum or holds your hand and looks into your eyes. Perhaps one subtext of the health care debate is a yen to be treated like a whole person, not just an eye, an ear, a nose or a throat. A yen to be human again, on the part of patient and doctor alike.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)