Emergency medicine job and duties
You get your breaks but you’re basically there when there’s a new patient that really needs to be rescued right away. You can’t tell them to wait for you until you finish your lunch. You might get another emergency doctor to cover for you but if they need your help, you have to be on the floor. Doctors don’t really get a good day or a good night. You have to be there when they page you. If you’re an emergency doctor and you’re sleeping at night at home, you might have to answer your page if they need to talk to you about your patients.
You get a team of emergency doctors, RT, and nurses to work with you. You’re never alone of course. You will be giving order to people and also perform procedures on patients. You can imagine that you’ll need to be a quick thinker and do things very quickly. A patient can die if you are slow or if you can’t think of a treatment right away. You don’t have thirty minutes to think of diagnoses and to research on your medication type. If you make wrong diagnoses or give the wrong type of medication, your patient life is at risk.
It’s risky being an emergency physician. All the pressure is on you. If you make a mistake, everyone will know about it. If you make too many mistakes, you might have to take a leave from your job too. You don’t get to make too many mistakes as an emergency physician. You don’t get to call other doctors and consult either. You have to treat the patient instantly. This is why experiences will help you if you’re an emergency physician. Any type of work that can help you build experiences will help you when you’re out on the floor. This is why emergency physician have to spend more time than other doctors to prepare themselves for their job. They have to continually learn new things and build up their experiences.
It’s a time sensitive job. You have a patient who has been flown in by the helicopter and they need you to rescue the patient right away. You have about thirty minutes to an hour to stabilize the patients. They depend on your knowledge and they could die if you are not too experienced with their condition. Of course, you will also get help from other emergency physician too. You’re not the only one who will be on the floor. They usually have a more experienced emergency physician along with the new physician. You will have a hectic work environment.
You’ll see people that are rushed onto the floor and they’re unconscious or near death and they need you to rescue them. They are not calm or conscious and they can’t tell you what’s wrong with them. They need you to guess or to make diagnoses on your own without knowing about their history condition or anything about them unless you got a good report from the EMT. You have to use a lot of good judgment as an emergency physician to rescue your patient. You rarely get to sit back and smile and interview your patients. They are unconscious or in extreme pain most of the time. They could even be dead on arrival. You have to see a lot drama and trauma as an emergency physician. You have to ask yourself if this is the field that you want to work in.
About the Author
To learn more about careers in emergency medicine visit the emergency medicine physician jobs page for more information and how to apply for a job.
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Defensive tactics for EMS and at-risk medical personnel