Emergency Medicine/Trauma Surgery

[Rhomboidlips]

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Hey everyone,
Just a quick question...I am interested equally in trauma surgery and EM. I read somewhere about facilities with ER docs handling trauma cases. Is this only in non-academic facilities where a patients injuries prevent them making it to one of the academic trauma centers? Or are there academic centers that have ER doctors in the trauma bays actually working on patients for a regular basis...not just consulted in the bays? Because if the latter is true...I WANT IN! Oh and if anyone has any advice on deciding between these two? I've heard the lifestyle advice...but anything else?

 

[GeneralVeers]

Hey everyone,
Just a quick question...I am interested equally in trauma surgery and EM. I read somewhere about facilities with ER docs handling trauma cases. Is this only in non-academic facilities where a patients injuries prevent them making it to one of the academic trauma centers? Or are there academic centers that have ER doctors in the trauma bays actually working on patients for a regular basis...not just consulted in the bays? Because if the latter is true...I WANT IN! Oh and if anyone has any advice on deciding between these two? I've heard the lifestyle advice...but anything else?

By "working on" do you mean performing surgery? Unless it's an emergent thoracotomy the answer is no. Any hospital with a trauma designation will have a surgeon on call to do the actual surgery.

 

[DropkickMurphy]

Ahh....newbies.....

 

[thierryh]

Looks like you may be an EVMS student.
EVMS is different than a lot of EM residency programs in that major trauma is handled by a seperate trauma team and bypasses the ED entirely into a seperate trauma resuscitation bay. A lot of, if not most, programs are much more involved with trauma on a day to day basis. The residents at EVMS do rotate on the trauma service but do not direct major trauma resuscitations on a day to day basis at Norfolk General in an integrated manner with the rest of their practice.

 

[turtle md]

As EM residents, we participate a good deal with trauma cases. Luckily, our participation ends after the secondary survey, etc. We do not have to follow the patient to the OR nor follow them on the floor. 🙂