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.