Department of Emergency Medicine

In our country, Emergency Medicine department was defined in the Official Gazette dated April 30, 1993 and numbered 21567 with the decision number 93/4270 and Emergency Medicine Departments were established at Dokuz Eylül University and Fırat University in 1994.

According to the International Federation for Emergeny Medicine definition, Emergency Medicine is the practice of medicine that encompasses the totality of knowledge and skills required for the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and management of acute and urgent forms of illness or injury caused by all undifferentiated physical and mental disorders affecting patients of all age groups. It also includes the skills necessary to understand and develop pre-hospital and in-hospital emergency medicine systems.

The Emergency Medicine major deals with the acute care of internal medical and surgical conditions. Emergency physicians examine a very high number of patients, manage their illnesses and organize their discharge from emergency departments (which can be done in 3 main ways: hospitalization, referral to another center or discharge home after treatment). The Emergency Medicine physician should have an extremely broad medical knowledge and skills in advanced interventional procedures such as surgical interventions, trauma resuscitation, advanced cardiac life support and advanced airway management. They are required to have the knowledge and skills of many different specialized fields. Examples include resuscitating patients (Critical Care), airway management (Anesthesia), repairing complex lacerations (Plastic Surgery), reducing fractures and dislocations (Orthopedics), managing heart attacks, heart failure, arrhythmias (Cardiology), stroke management (Neurology), approach to the pregnant patient with vaginal bleeding (Gynecology), nosebleeds (Ear-Nose-Throat), chest tube insertion (Thoracic Surgery), use of bedside ultrasonography, interpretation of direct radiography and computed tomography (Radiology).