Accident and emergency medicine or emergency medicine

Is a career in emergency medicine associated with stigma?

OBJECTIVE

Many emergency medicine staff report anecdotally that fellow hospital staff have a low opinion of emergency medicine. No research into this attitude has been published. The aim of this study is to determine whether there is stigma attached to emergency medicine and practitioners.

METHOD

A postal questionnaire of all medical staff at a district general hospital, to evaluate the presence or absence of eight perceptions associated with stigma.

RESULTS

The response rate was 49.5%, with the response rate decreasing with decreasing grade. Of the stigmatizing themes tested in this study, six of the eight were demonstrated to be associated with negative attitudes, with the remaining two themes positive attitudes towards emergency medicine were suggested. The responses were similar, irrespective of grade and speciality (where given by respondees). Responses that were ambivalent or not completed varied between 25 and 48% in the returned questionnaires.

CONCLUSIONS

This paper demonstrates that stigmatizing opinions towards emergency medicine exist and that these negative opinions may be widely held by hospital staff.

Emergency medicine terminology in the United Kingdom--time to follow the trend?

OBJECTIVE

To determine the frequency of use of the terms "accident and emergency" and "emergency medicine" and their derivatives in original articles in the Journal of Accident and Emergency Medicine.

METHODS

Hand search of all articles in the Journal of Accident and Emergency Medicine from September 1995 to July 2000, categorising the first use of terminology in each original article to describe the specialty, its departments, or their staff into either accident and emergency or emergency medicine groups.

RESULTS

There is a clear trend towards increasing use of the terms emergency medicine, emergency physician and emergency department, with decreasing use of the terms accident and emergency medicine, accident and emergency department and accident and emergency doctor, although the latter group still constitutes the majority.

CONCLUSION

The use of emergency medicine to describe the specialty in the United Kingdom is increasing, although this may reflect the Journal's growing international standing. This trend should be taken into account in the debate over the specialty's name in this country.