Most people believe that the emergency department is always available to help provide non-elective acute hospital care. Daniel Fatovich explains why this is not necessarily so

Emergency medicine is a field of practice based on the knowledge and skills required for the prevention, diagnosis, and management of the acute and urgent aspects of illness and injury affecting patients of all age groups with a full spectrum of undifferentiated physical and behavioural disorders.1 It is a specialty in which time is critical. Anyone who has been to an emergency department will appreciate that it is a complex and often turbulent environment. The emergency department is like the fire brigade—you hope you won't need it, but if you do, you expect a timely response.

Emergency medicine is a fairly new specialty. Resuscitation, toxicology, and clinical criteria for imaging represent some of the core topics of the practice of emergency medicine. This review focuses on these key areas and underlines the major problem that the specialty faces—namely, overcrowding.