What is Emergency Medicine & Critical Care?
Emergency medicine is a medical specialty that equips physicians with the knowledge and skills required to care for patients with very urgent and often life-threatening healthcare needs. Emergency care is provided to acutely ill and injured patients of all ages. Some examples of emergency care are heart attacks, strokes, fractures, asthma attacks, injuries resulting from car crashes, pregnancy related emergencies and overdoses.
Critical care is the provision of specialised, continuous, multidisciplinary care for patients in a life-threatening, but treatable condition, who require some or all of the following:
- Continuous clinical direction and care from a specialist consultant-led medical team and constant attention from specialist nursing staff
- Continuous, uninterrupted physiological monitoring, supervised by staff who are able to interpret and immediately act on the information.
- Artificial organ support
