Emergency medicine as an academic discipline
A. I. Sutnick and D. K. Wagner
Because of an explosive increase in the use of emergency rooms in hospitals
across the country, many hospitals have found it expedient to employ
full-time emergency physicians. The demand for emergency physicians has
prompted the development of training programs in emergency medicine in
academic medical centers. The first such training program was instituted at
The Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1970. The 32 current programs in the
nation are filling a real need in providing manpower for hospital emergency
rooms. With the increasing identification and distribution of emergency
physicians, there has been an attempt to develop emergency medicine as a
distinct discipline and to establish its legitimacy in the structure of
academic medical centers. A variety of problems must be addressed to
clarify the role of emergency medicine in the academic setting.
