Emergency Medicine Day Date in the current year: May 27, 2024

Emergency medicine focuses on the care of injuries or illnesses that require immediate medical attention. Emergency physicians, nurses, paramedics, and other medical personnel specializing in emergency medicine are first-line healthcare workers who have to care for unscheduled patients of all ages.

The main purpose of emergency medicine is to provide timely and competent first response to a wide range of life threatening conditions such as heart attack, stroke, cardiac arrest, respiratory failure, trauma, bleeding, and sepsis. Emergency medicine is not concerned with conditions that can be managed in the primary or ambulatory care setting

Emergency medicine specialists (doctors, nurses, paramedics, technicians) provide their services in emergency department/rules in hospitals and in the pre-hospital field, including during natural disasters and humanitarian crises.

In most developed countries, there are emergency medicine systems and special training programs for medical personnel specializing in emergency medicine. However, emergency medicine in developing countries is still evolving. To promote the growth of emergency medicine in parts of the world there it is underdeveloped, there exist international emergency medicine programs.

Emergency Medicine Day commemorates the founding of the European Society for Emergency Medicine. Established on May 27, 1994 at the International Conference of Emergency Medicine in London, it brought together national societies of emergency medicine from over 30 European countries to promote international emergency medicine in Europe.

The main goals of Emergency Medicine Day are to raise awareness about the importance of free and high-quality of emergency medical care, to encourage decision makes to develop emergency medicine systems in their respective countries, and to create an emergency medicine system model that will give every European citizen access to emergency medical care, with a special focus on underdeveloped and remote areas.

The observance also raises awareness of the challenges that emergency medicine specialists face on a daily bases and the need to improve their working conditions. This medical specialty is very stressful because almost every situation that requires emergency medical care is a life or death one. Because of this, emergency doctors and nurses are especially susceptible to fatigue, depression, and burnout.

Every Emergency Medicine Day has a theme that raises awareness of a certain aspect of emergency medical care. Past themes have included “Competence makes the difference”, “For a better emergency care ask for more doctors + nurses + services”, “We are always there for you”, and “We take care of you, please take care of us”.