Careers in EM

Updated July 2022

Most Emergency Physicians work in Emergency Departments.  This is the unifying characteristic of our careers.  However, beyond that there are countless directions to take your career.  The big areas of separation are practice setting and personal expertise.

Practice setting

There is a much discussed divide between Academic EM and Community EM.  An Academic career means practicing in a teaching hospital with a medical school affiliation and, usually, with an EM residency.  An academic Emergency Physicians time is split between clinical and extra-clinical education of residents and students and working to advance the body of medical knowledge (research and other forms of scholarship).  

A Community career is focused on direct patient care and typically involves little or sporadic clinical teaching.  The reality is that many people work in "hybrid" jobs.  Some split their time between both academic and community ED's.  Others practice in an academic ED and teach clinically but are not involved in research or extra-clinical education.  Also, some practice at a community site that has frequent trainees from other specialties and medical students.

Personal Expertise

Regardless of what kind of primary practice setting they have, most Emergency Physicians develop interests and expertise.  Some examples are:

• Critical care*
• Cruise ship medicine
• Department and hospital administration*
• Disaster management and response*
• Emergency Medical Services (EMS)*
• Health Equity*
• Health Policy*
• Medical Education*
• Expedition medicine
• Global Health*
• Hyperbaric Medicine*
• Pediatric Emergency Medicine*
• Research*
• Sports medicine*
• Toxicology*
• Ultrasound*
• Wilderness medicine*

Many of these areas of expertise have opportunities to gain additional fellowship training (noted with a *), but this is not always required to get involved.