How many ER doctors are in your hospital during your residency?

[coolness]

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I've volunteered at a hospital where there's only 1 ER doctor in any given shift. When he/she is overwhelmed, other ER docs that are on-call are paged. Is this atypical? I also saw an IM doc help out a little bit.

 

[Seaglass]

It depends on the patient volume of the hospital and their desire for coverage. At Wake we have double coverage in the adult ED 14 hours a day plus single coverage in the Peds ED 20 hours a day plus someone in fast track. This is at a place with moderate volume. Another place I rotated at they had ~3 attendings on during busy hours and 1 overnight. That place had >80k annual visits (integrated).

C

 

[southerndoc]

Where I went to medical school, the EM physicians had triple coverage from noon to 11pm, double coverage from 6am-noon and 11pm-2am, and single coverage between 2am-6am. IM and FP residents rotated through the ED (no dedicated residency), but no IM, FP, or surgery attendings staffed the ED as attendings. All were EM-residency trained and ABEM board certified. Annual ED volume was about 65-70,000.

The peds ED had a pediatric EM attending single coverage. Peds residents rotated through the ED. Pediatricians and peds EM attendings staffed the ED, occasionally adult ED attendings with no peds fellowship would staff if they were short. Not sure of the peds volume.

 

[Sessamoid]

I've volunteered at a hospital where there's only 1 ER doctor in any given shift. When he/she is overwhelmed, other ER docs that are on-call are paged. Is this atypical? I also saw an IM doc help out a little bit.

At my residency, the attendings were double covered from around 10a-10p (more or less), and single covered for the night. That plus at least one 2nd/3rd year resident and the assorted uselsss interns made things pretty manageable for a volume of ~50K/year.

I've since worked in large academic EDs with triple/double coverage and PAs, and currently in a single coverage situation. Single coverage is definitely more nerve-wracking at times, since you just can't slack off. When lots of **** hits the fan, I have to catch all of it.