Emergency Medicine Specialist
What the work is
Provides diagnostic medical services and manages patients with acute and urgent illness and injury.
Would you enjoy the work?
These are the main tasks in the official description. Mark how each one sounds to you.
- Examines and assesses patients with acute and urgent illness or injury
- Requests laboratory tests, X-rays and other diagnostic procedures, and interprets the results
- Provides safe and immediate care to resuscitate and stabilise patients, and manage their conditions
- Performs various life-saving procedures in operating and procedure rooms
- Refers patients to, and exchanges medical information with, relevant Medical Practitioners
- Monitors patients' progress and response to treatment, and documents patient records
- May participate in emergency responses and disaster management activities
Try it
A simulation and a case study from this kind of work, set in a hospital imaging department that supports the emergency department, wards and local GPs. They are fictional.
The kind of days you could have
Good days
- A scan that looked ordinary gives a clear answer, and a patient gets the right care sooner
- A trainee finally sees what you have been pointing at on the screen
- A referring doctor rings back to say your report changed their plan
Hard days
- A queue of urgent scans grows while a worried family waits in the corridor for news
- You spot something nobody was looking for and have to decide how to raise it
- Long hours alone in a dim room with a screen, a phone and a pager that never stops
Written by Career Calling as a general guide. Real roles vary by employer and place.
Work a mission
Step into a simulated workplace in this field, with a brief from your manager.
Description and tasks: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Occupation Standard Classification for Australia, 2024, Version 1.0 (opens another site), occupation 264932, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. The skill guide above is our plain English summary.