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Abstract
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What is emergency medicine?....
I have reviewed 10 successive editions of BMJ Classified (14 October 2000 to 16 December 2000) in order to identify all job advertisements for "emergency physicians" or doctors to work in "emergency medicine". Further study of the advertisements allowed me to establish which of these posts were to work in (accident and) emergency departments and which to work in medical assessment/admission units and/or general medicine. The results of this study show that the majority of positions in "emergency medicine" (11 versus 6) are in fact to work in acute general medicine.
I believe that it is now time for our speciality to adopt the name emergency medicine, to bring us in line with our colleagues in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Far East. If we do not, we are in danger of losing the title altogether to a subspeciality of general medicine. If this were to happen, we would be stuck with "A&E" which, along with its predecessor "casualty", belong firmly in the last millennium. (term-accident-vs-injury)
Language: en |