Last few years we saw few Emergency Medicine (EM) trained doctors taking senior clinical management roles and establishing themselves as well positioned leaders. Can it be by chance, or it is because of any other reason.
It is easy to say that it all seems like a stroke of luck, yet let us talk about a few skills of EM trained doctors which help them climb the ladder of higher clinical management. By the nature of its work, the emergency department (ED) is considered many hospital. It has almost all the components of the hospital with patients coming in, getting admitted, going to operation theater for operations, getting discharged and so on and so forth. The people working in the emergency departments get the exposure composite of all of the hospital in just a few hours of working in ED. They not only understand most of the issues pertaining to the patient care, but also have successfully taken care of the issues and know the solutions.
ED is also the place where rapid paced work is carried out. The usual stay of all patients are a fraction of a day, while patients stay in the multiple of days in hospital other than ED. This requires quick decision making, high pace and pressured work and precision in decision making. Physicians who are not quick decision makers either have to adapt and learn or may have to move on.
Another aspect of ED care is that it is all encompassing. Patients of all ages and all backgrounds come. And with all different complaints. A person working in the ED is accustomed to see patients all across specialties from cardiology to gynecology to dermatology to psychiatry. So the physician gets well versed in multitude of patient problems and working of the different departments. It also gives them a chance to interact with all specialties and make inroads into different departments, thus building trust and forging friendship.
For the training of EM, it is must that the trainees inculcate the value of teamwork and working together with other specialties to serve the care to our patients in better way. They develop skills of decision-making and of being effective under pressure as well as under stress, thus preparing them to be effective leaders.