Emergency Medicine Electives

Emergency Medicine 

Prerequisite: Fourth-year medical students who have successfully completed their Internal Medicine, Surgery, and Pediatric clerkships. Availability is limited.

Munson Medical Center's Emergency Department is staffed by board-certified emergency physicians and has achieved designation as a Level II Trauma Center.

Objectives:

• Acquire a core knowledge base in emergency medicine, including recognition of life-threatening conditions and initial basic resuscitation. Topics to be covered include (but are not limited to): airway management, CPR, shock, abdominal pain, chest pain, respiratory emergencies, wound management, febrile infant, blunt trauma, and toxicology.
• Be exposed to unscreened, undifferentiated patients with common presenting complaints of acute illness and injury.
• Develop skills in quickly establishing a doctor/patient relationship with a diverse ED patient population, while assessing the patient's complaint in an effective and efficient manner. Each patient will be presented to emergency medicine faculty, with emphasis on developing a concise presentation format covering pertinent history and physical, differential diagnosis, and management and disposition plan. The student will be given immediate feedback and training on each case presentation.
• Demonstrate clinical problem solving in emergency medicine, including prioritization, rapid decision making, concurrent diagnosis, therapy and disposition planning, and cost-effective clinical differentiation of common and catastrophic problems.
• Develop and improve skills in basic emergency medicine and ambulatory procedures including (but not limited to): phlebotomy, IVs, NG tube placement, urinary catheterization, suturing and wound care, lumbar puncture, basic and advanced airway procedures, FAST exam for trauma, and radiographic and EKG interpretation.
• Gain an understanding of teamwork and the relationship between the emergency department and other departments, medical staff, and pre-hospital systems.
• Develop and exhibit professional attributes and behaviors.

This elective offers students the opportunity to function as a sub-intern in a high-volume emergency department under the supervision of the emergency medicine faculty. The student should expect to work on all shifts, including weekends. The department uses electronic medical records. It is required that the student be available for an orientation to the EMR system.