Emergency Medicine

Doctors in emergency medicine (EM) carry out the immediate assessment and treatment of patients with serious and life-threatening illnesses and injuries.

Nature of the work

They see patients of all age groups with a full spectrum of undifferentiated physical and behavioural disorders.

They treat conditions such as:

• loss of consciousness, eg from an injury to the head, drug poisoning, an epileptic fit
• severe bleeding
• damage to the brain or other major organs, due to trauma
• cardiac arrest (when the pumping action of the heart stops)
• breathing difficulties
• broken bones
• mental health problems, eg self-harm patients

Entry requirements

Prior to applying to emergency medicine training you need to have completed a medical degree followed by the two-year Foundation Programme. Successful applicants can choose one of the following two options:

• run through training (RTT) which means that they ‘run through’ their training from ST1-ST6
• core training, which lasts for three years, CT1-3, followed by specialty training in emergency medicine, ST4-ST6.