Pre hospital emergency medicine

Pre-hospital emergency medicine (abbreviated PHEM) is a medical speciality which focuses on caring for seriously ill or injured patients before they reach hospital, and during emergency transfer to hospital or between hospitals. It is primarily a subspecialty of emergency medicine, but may also be practised by physicians from other acute specialties such as anaesthesia, intensive care medicine and acute medicine.

Practitioners in PHEM are usually well-integrated with local emergency medical services, and are dispatched together with emergency medical technicians or paramedics where potentially life-threatening trauma or illness is suspected that may benefit from immediate specialist medical treatment. This may involve travelling by car or air ambulance to the site.

In the UK, PHEM was recognised as a subspecialty of emergency medicine and anaesthetics in July 2011 by the General Medical Council.