Emergency medicine focuses on diagnosis and treatment of acute illnesses and injuries that require immediate care. While not usually providing long-term care, EM physicians and pre-hospital personnel 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 non-Emergency Medicine trained physicians and/or nurses, which treats patients who desire or require immediate care, but do not reach the acuity that requires care in an emergency department.

Emergency Medicine involves a large amount of general medicine but involves all fields of medicine including the surgical sub-specialties. Emergency Physicians are tasked with seeing a large number of patients, treating their illnesses and admitting them to the hospital as necessary. The field requires a broad field of knowledge and requires advance procedural skills often including surgical procedures, trauma resuscitation, advance cardiac life support and advanced airway management.