Job Description
Doctors in emergency medicine carry out the immediate assessment and treatment of patients with serious and life-threatening illnesses and injuries. They will see patients of all ages and with all sorts of physical and behavioural disorders and will treat many conditions from loss of consciousness, cardiac arrest and breathing difficulties to severe bleeding, broken bones and mental health problems.
Entry Requirements
Prior to applying to emergency medicine training you need to have completed a medical degree followed by the two-year Foundation Programme. Successful applicants can choose one of the following two options:
- run through training (RTT) which means that they 'run through' their training from ST1-ST6
- core training, which lasts for three years, CT1-3, followed by specialty training in emergency medicine, ST4-ST6.
Detailed information on training routes is given on the NHS training and development page.
If you have already made a decision to pursue a career in emergency medicine, try to get experience in the specialty or related areas such as intensive care medicine or acute internal medicine.
To find information about getting into medical school, visit the NHS applying to medicine pages.
To find information about the Foundation Programme, visit the NHS foundation training page.
Career Path and Progression
There are opportunities to be employed by the NHS, academic institutions, private sector, universities, armed forces, organisations and national governing bodies. You could specialise in paediatric emergency medicine, pre-hospital emergency medicine, sports medicine, critical care or academic emergency medicine.
Required Skills
- making decisions quickly and being able to tolerate risk
- staying calm in a pressured environment
- flexibility and being able to cope with a constantly varying workload
- resilience
- attending to detail
- operating equipment
- communicating well especially with anxious patients and their families
- working as part of a team and in a leadership role
- being self-motivated and self-reliant
- commitment to continuing to learn and to developing your knowledge of a wide range of medical conditions and disorders in patients of all ages
- an interest in developing and improving pre-hospital and in-hospital medical systems
- teaching and research
Salary Range
£28,243 to £49,036
