Medical director question

[pillowsnice]

I've seen EM physicians who are also medical directors. How common is this and how practical is it to work in an ED and be a medical director for EMS?

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[deleted109597]

Every ED needs a medical director of the department. Every EMS agency (and many police, fire, etc) need them as well. The majority are EM docs. It's pretty common.
Bigger cities require more experience, EMS fellowships, etc.

 

[InternistDO]

I'm still in med school, but when I worked in EMS, all of our medical directors worked in the ED full time. Most were EM boarded, though one of the services had an IM boarded doc who worked in the ED, and when I worked in a rural service the medical director was a FP doc who worked in the ED and in his own outpatient practice.

Medical direction is not a full time job except in the largest of urban ambulance services (In Philadelphia I'm pretty sure the Fire Department medical director is an attending at HUP, for example), so I can't imagine a better setup for being an EMS medical director than being a boarded EM doctor working in an ED.

 

[carbonizedeyesockets]

It is mostly EM docs that do medical direction. Many do it for free or for a small fee. Some get fewer clinical hours in order to devote time to EMS duties (some academic places). Some cities pay the medical directors - I came across one contract for a current medical director in a midsize midwest city that paid something like 70,000/yr. Most DO NOT get paid enough to do it full time. I've heard (as in I don't know it to be true for sure) that the medical director for philadelphia gets 1$ per year.