Defining emergency medicine

Abstract

The COVID‐19 pandemic has led to the development of alternative means of accessing unplanned care in order to avoid unnecessary ED presentations and hospital admissions. We explore the definition of emergency medicine, which patients are better served by accessing unplanned hospital care via alternative pathways, and the concept of emergency care completion.

Emergency department care: It really is in the name

“…Crofton and Staib provided a useful starting point for these discussions with their opinion paper in the August 2022 issue of Emergency Medicine Australasia. 2 They proposed that emergency medicine is 'the reception, assessment and management of the unstable, unknown and undifferentiated patient'.…”