Wayfaring MD

Well, no, I haven’t done much ER work. But I can tell you a few things about ER medicine that are just sort of common knowledge in the medical world. For specifics I’d ask blue-lights-and-tea, who is an A&E (the fancy British way of saying ER) doc in the UK, Cranquis, who is an Urgent Care doc (Urgent Care has a lot of similarities to ER work), or ERmedicine (who works in an ER but keeps his job title a secret other than to say he is not a doctor). 

So here’s a few things to know about the ER:
1. It’s great for people who don’t mind not having continuity of care. You see the patient once, get ‘em stable, and either send them home or turn them over to another doc to admit them.

2. It can be very frustrating to deal with “frequent fliers” and people who come to the ER for non urgent problems (which make up about 50% of ER patient visits).

3. It’s not like TV. Not every patient who comes in is crashing and needing to be intubated or shocked. Sure, that stuff happens, but not like TV would have you to believe. 

4. You have to be ok with seeing patients across the demographic spectrum. You’ll likely see kids, teenagers, adults, pregnant patients, and old folks. If you don’t like handling one of those groups of people, maybe ER isn’t for you. 

5. You can sub-specialize. There are options to do fellowships in Trauma, Pediatric ER, Critical Care, Sports Medicine, or Toxicology.

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As for where to go to college, it ultimately doesn’t matter much. Find a school with a decent reputation that you enjoy and that you think you can do well at, and go there. Find a place that has a good program for the major you intend to pick. Names don’t matter all that much. You can try to find undergrads that are affiliated with med schools if you want a tiny bit better chance of getting in, but it’s not a must. For more on that topic, check these two posts.