The answer to what I think was the intended meaning of the OQ is that OR time is not in EM Docs' job descriptions, and that very few, if any, have OR privileges at US hospitals.
The more accurate answer to the OQ requires a clarification of "surgery".
dictionary.com, surgery:
1. The branch of medicine that deals with the diagnosis and treatment of injury, deformity, and disease by manual and instrumental means.
EM Docs certainly spend a substantial amount their time diagnosing surgical conditions and performing manual and instrumental interventions to treat general, orthpaedic, and cosmetic conditions.
Some may reply that to do surgery is to do operations.
websters, operation:
4. A procedure carried out on a living body usually with instruments especially for the repair of damage or the restoration of health
Which again, is encompassed by many of the above-mentioned tasks. If you believe that "to cut is to cure" and that it is definitiveness of therapy that defines surgery, than I'll tell you that I "cured" two abscesses last week.
So if you are asking if EM Docs perform surgery, I would say yes. But if you are asking if EM Docs work in the OR, than the answer is no.
