what is the diffrence between emergency medicine and critical care medicine?

Answer 1

Emergency medicine is a branch of medicine that is practiced in a hospital emergency department, in the field by emergency medical service operatives, such as paramedics, and other locations where initial medical treatment of illness takes place. Just as clinicians operate by immediacy rules under large emergency systems, emergency physicians base their practice on a triage system.

Emergency medicine focuses on diagnosis and treatment of acute illnesses and injuries that require immediate medical attention. While not usually providing long-term or continuous care, emergency medicine physicians and paramedics still provide care with the aim of improving long-term patient outcome. In the United States, some people use the emergency department for outpatient care that could be provided at a doctor's office. As a result, much of emergency room care is general practice (coughs, colds, aches, pains).
A variant of an Emergency Department is an Urgent Care Center, often staffed by physicians, nurses and nurse practitioners who may or may not be formally trained in emergency medicine. Urgent Care Centers offer treatment to patients who desire or require immediate care, but who do not reach the acuity that requires care in an emergency department.

Emergency Medicine encompasses a large amount of general medicine but involves virtually all fields of medicine including the surgical sub-specialties. Emergency physicians are tasked with seeing a large number of patients, treating their illnesses and arranging for disposition - either admitting them to the hospital or releasing them after treatment as necessary. The emergency physician requires a broad field of knowledge and advanced procedural skills often including surgical procedures, trauma resuscitation, advanced cardiac life support and advanced airway management. Emergency physicians ideally have the skills of many specialists, the ability to manage a difficult airway (anesthesia), suture a complex laceration (plastic surgery), treat a heart attack (internist), work-up a pregnant patient with vaginal bleeding (Obstetrics and Gynaecology), and stop a bad nosebleed (ENT).


Intensive Care Medicine or critical care medicine is a branch of medicine concerned with the provision of life support or organ support systems in patients who are critically ill and who usually require intensive monitoring.

Patients requiring intensive care usually require support for hemodynamic instability (hypertension/hypotension), airway or respiratory compromise (such as ventilator support), acute renal failure, potentially lethal cardiac dysrhythmias, and frequently the cumulative affects of multiple organ system failure. Patients admitted to the intensive care unit not requiring support for the above are usually admitted for intensive/invasive monitoring, such as the crucial hours after major surgery when deemed too unstable to transfer to a less intensively monitored unit.

Ideally, intensive care is usually only offered to those whose condition is potentially reversible and who have a good chance of surviving with intensive care support. Since the critically ill are close to dying the outcome of this intervention is difficult to predict. Many patients therefore still die in the Intensive Care Unit. A prime requisite for admission to an Intensive Care Unit is that the underlying condition can be overcome. Therefore treatment is merely meant to win time in which the acute affliction can be resolved.
Medical studies suggest a relation between intensive care unit(ICU) volume and quality of care for mechanically ventilated patients. After adjustment for severity of illness, demographic variables, and characteristics of the ICUs (including staffing by intensivists), higher ICU volume was significantly associated with lower ICU and hospital mortality rates. For example, adjusted ICU mortality (for a patient at average predicted risk for ICU death) was 21.2% in hospitals with 87 to 150 mechanically ventilated patients annually, and 14.5% in hospitals with 401 to 617 mechanically ventilated patients annually. Hospitals with intermediate numbers of patients had outcomes between these extremes.

Answer 2

Tons of difference, especially since the ER is open to all. The general impression of emergency medicine is the heart attacks and major trauma, but most patients aren't that sick. Kids with colds, people with backaches and toothaches, all sorts of minor ills are common, and sometimes they're important. One patient in our ED was a young man with diarrhea who developed DIC, and the critical care guys get to work on him (and tell us the connection) for the days to come. It's my goal to have everybody treated and gone home or into a hospital bed within a couple of hours. The critical care guys' patients are all sicker than stink, and they have to keep working on them. Of course, it's not uncommon for there to be no ICU beds available, so the ER gets to play ICU until a bed opens up, but that's a problem of money and government regulation, not within the control of the doctors.
One of the things I like most about emergency medicine is that two patients may appear much alike but have radically different problems. The guy in one room may have a backache because he's out of shape and overdone things a bit, where his twin in the next room has a backache from an abdominal aortic aneurysm that's trying to pop and kill him. The intensivist knows his patient is in bad shape. He just has to figure out why and what to do.

Answer 3

Emergency medicine is given in the Emergency Department.

Critical Care is given in ICU.

Not to say that ICU patient's donr often get emergency-care..they do.

And the Emergency Department is set up to do everything they do in ICU. ICU is after the patient has been admitted to the hospital. Where ED is temporary, either you get sent home or go to another unit.

Hope this helps :)

Answer 4

Emergency Medicine comprises pre-hospital and arrival to hospital serious injuries and illnesses - the treatment and stabilization of same.
Critical Care Medicine comprises the ongoing treatment of seriously ill or injured patients who are already in-patients in hospital.
Once a seriously ill patient is stabilized in the ER, they may then be moved to the hospital's Critical Care area for ongoing, extended treatment.

Answer 5

Emergency medicine has its own department. It deals with emergency situations and most of the reasons a patient would present to the hospital - heart attack, stroke, asthma, infection, etc.

Critical care is under the domain of anesthesiology, pulmonary care and recently has been given its own department. This deals with acutely ill patients or post-operative patients requiring alot of intensive care. For example, post open heart surgery patients. Or burn patients, or multi-organ system failure. Usually these patients are intubated and on a respirator. They are unable to eat and receive nutrition intravenously. Their fluids and metabolites must be checked frequently, they require significantly more nursing care than patients on the wards.

Answer 6

In emergency medicine urgent treatment is required. Critical care means the life is in danger.

Answer 7

When to Seek Medical Care
If you are not known to have diabetes but are having any symptoms that suggest diabetes or concern you in any way, make an appointment to see your health care provider as soon as possible. When you make the appointment, tell the operator that you are concerned about diabetes. He or she may make arrangements for blood sugar testing before your appointment.
If you want to get more information visit this website

Answer 8

ER vs ICU