Welcome & Tips

Welcome to the Emergency Department

A PowerPoint presentation by Prof Luke Larkin giving an overview of what Emergency Medicine is all about

The Ten Commandments of Emergency Medicine

A PowerPoint presentation by Prof Luke Larkin explaining the "rules of the road" in the Emergency Department

A main objective of this online course is to ensure students are assessed fairly and consistently at the end of the year 4 academic year.  This is largely achieved by ensuring that the 10 selected topics are explored by students across the Auckland and Waikato region in a consistent manner. Thus, when we set the exam we know that questions based on these topics are fair and reasonable. 

However, we hope that you don’t lose sight of the multitude of other learning opportunities that will present themselves to you in the ED.  In ED we are really fortunate to have a wide array of conditions of all levels of severity that present to us. For a medical student this means that while you are with us you could learn more about teamwork, surgery, gynaecology, Maori health, communication, general medicine, professionalism, and orthopaedics to name a few. Not only are these topics examinable at the end of the year, they overlap and share common elements that will apply to your future practice, whatever it may be. 

While you are in our Emergency Departments we trust that you will be exposed to each of these core topics, with the probable exception of major trauma. Some of you may choose to review the topics beforehand, others might do so at the time or even afterwards. There is plenty of time during your attachment to attend to reflection, review and reading. The more you revisit these topics and the more you attach them to real experiences, the more likely you are to remember them long term. And the best thing is that what you remember is more likely to be directly relevant to actual medical practice!

We designed this online course to help you frame your understanding of these common conditions. We have provided you with the key concepts in each topic that we expect all students to cover. However, we expect that you will take the opportunity to explore each in more detail by formulating and answering questions of your own. We hope that when you see patients in the ED you will be inquisitive and develop more questions of your own. There are references at the end of each topic which we think might help you answer some of your questions. The suggested text book (Cameron) should be available in each department, as should other valuable, credible sources of information.

There are many other conditions that you will experience while with us, and each represents a learning opportunity.  Please immerse yourself in the experience. The more you offer to help out with the general tasks, the more you will feel like part of our team and the more enjoyable your time will be.