Our Emergency Medicine Medical Student Elective is offered to selected fourth-year medical or osteopathic students. This elective is helpful to students seriously considering a career in Emergency Medicine, since it gives the student and ED personnel a chance to become mutually acquainted. This has been a very popular elective because it allows the student to be the first member of the physician team to evaluate the patient. Students function as sub-interns and have primary responsibility for their patients, with close supervision by emergency medicine faculty and residents. Students are exposed to a wide variety of patient problems.
Students are active participants in the resuscitation of critically ill and injured patients.
We see many critically ill patients at University Medical Center. We are the regional Level 1 Trauma Center and see many penetrating and blunt trauma injuries. Medical students while not seeing the critically ill patients primarily are involved in the decision making process. There are often opportunities to see and do procedures such as central line insertion, chest tube insertion, diagnostic peritoneal lavage, and fracture reduction. Our emergency medicine elective includes ride-along experience with the paramedic ambulance system.