What an Emergency Medicine Residency Will Prepare You For

Written By: Rachael Kaine

Choosing an Emergency Medicine Residency

The medical field is filled with opportunities to learn and help others, but no field is as rewarding as the emergency medicine branch. Whereas hospital buildings are filled each day with scheduled patients that have specific needs and questions that they need to have answered, someone that needs emergency care is a whole different story. An emergency medicine residency is meant to prepare health care providers for the unknown, giving them a chance to help people that may come in on a moment’s notice. A Georgetown emergency medicine residency will prepare you to make spur of the moment decisions while working in a high energy, fast paced and constantly evolving environment. This residency will allow you, over the course of roughly three years, to learn new skills, develop intuition and learn to best use skills and abilities to save lives.

What is Covered During an Emergency Medicine Residency?

Comprised of learning in on the job situations as well as by studying past cases and patients, an emergency medicine residency will prepare you for just about anything that comes through the doors of a hospital or emergency room. Though many things are covered throughout the course of training, some of the most important include:

Making a Diagnosis: In many emergency cases, a quick diagnosis can mean the difference between life or death, and at the very least, between immediate pain relief and prolonged uncertainty and suffering. Patients utilize emergency care and providers to find out exactly what is wrong, and you will need to be able to assess situations quickly.

Variety of Patients: The most unique thing about a career in emergency medicine is that no two days will ever be the same, and it is impossible to prepare for the day ahead. Sure, you can be ready and willing to give help, but there is no way to predict what kinds of situations you’ll be faced with when walking through the door. A typical day may include everything from evaluating patients for bodily pain to correcting and managing the after effects of a heart attack.

Preparing for Long Hours: Though emergency medical care providers work long hours, they also have dedicated time off. The residency experience will provide you with the opportunity to become accustomed to working up to 12 hours at a time, which can give you an opportunity to pursue other interests, both related to the medical field and otherwise.

Dealing with Challenges: An emergency medicine provider will be forced to make decisions, and in many cases this will be done before anyone else has the opportunity to work with the patient, aside from the EMTs. This means beginning care, deciding what must be done, and even performing different procedures on an as needed basis.