Author: Christopher I. Doty, MD FAAEM FACEP (@PoppasPearls – Program Director & Vice Chair, Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine, Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Kentucky-Chandler Medical Center) // Edited by: Manpreet Singh, MD (@MPrizzleER – Clinical Instructor & Ultrasound/Med-Ed Fellow / Harbor-UCLA Medical Center) and Alex Koyfman, MD (@EMHighAK – EM Attending Physician, UT Southwestern Medical Center / Parkland Memorial Hospital)

The Emergency Medicine mindset to me is a multi-factorial way of approaching the world. Often, I think this way of approaching the world goes beyond just our ED shifts. An emergency physician has many of the same characteristics outside of the clinical area, as they do inside. Confidence, excellent people skills, good judgment, and resilience.

People Skills

One of the fundamental skills in the emergency medicine mindset is to develop a quick rapport with our patients. Successful emergency physicians have to be extraordinarily efficient and need to have the skills to develop a quick rapport with their patients. The ability to get a patient to see you as being on their side quickly is the first step informing a good therapeutic alliance. This alliance is necessary to move them forward through the process of diagnosis and therapeutics.

If you are interested in reading the rest of this and other EM Mindset pieces, please see “An Emergency Medicine Mindset,” a collection evaluating the thought process of emergency physicians. This book is available as ebook and print on Amazon.