Emergency Medicine in the United States. Role in Disaster Planning and Management

Abstract

International organizations such as the World Association for Emergency and Disaster Medicine (Club of Mainz) have brought attention to the need for improved worldwide emergency medical services (EMS) systems and disaster preparedness (1). Similar concerns in the United States (US) for improved emergency medical care have resulted in the organization of emergency medicine as a new medical specialty (2). The practice of this specialty of medicine in some ways differs from the practice of emergency medicine, reanimation medicine, or resuscitology, in Europe. In the United States, emergency medicine specialists provide emergency care for the full range of emergency health conditions, including accidents and trauma, medical emergencies, toxicologic emergencies, psychiatric and social emergencies, and disasters. This care is provided primarily in hospital emergency departments and includes the immediate initial recognition, evaluation, treatment and disposition of these patients with acute illness and injury. For continuing care, patients are referred to their own physicians.Emergency medicine physicians provide medical direction for community EMS and supervise the prehospital emergency medical care provided by non-physicians (emergency medical technicians and paramedics). Emergency physicians engage in the administration, research and teaching of all aspects of emergency medical care. They also provide consultation to governmental and nongovernmental organizations on emergency health care issues. Recently, with the basic framework of emergency medicine established, attention is being given to disaster planning and management.