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* Correspondence to: Dr. Douglas Sinclair, St. Michael’s Hospital, Department of Emergency Medicine, 30 Bond Street, Toronto, ON M5B 1W8; Email: [email protected]
In this issue of CJEM, after much consultation and debate, the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians (CAEP) has published its position statement on Emergency Medicine Definitions. 1 As a “senior” emergency physician and one of the few who is proudly certified in emergency medicine (EM) by both the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (RCPSC) and the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC), I think this is an important document to set the direction for ongoing improvements in emergency care across Canada. It is important to remember how far we have come on the journey. In the 1980s, a number of young, enthusiastic, and mostly male physicians saw a need for improved care in the emergency rooms as they were called at the time. Care was fragmented, there was no triage, prehospital care was “you call, we haul, that’s all,” and the emergency department was often just a “room” and in some provinces was called “The Outdoor.”
Over the next few years, there were dramatic new innovations in care: early intervention in trauma, recognition of sepsis, rapid diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular emergencies, and a new specialized body of knowledge in the first 15 minutes of every specialty and the critical link to primary care. A small but committed and visionary group of physicians, together with their nursing and...