Departments of Instruction

Department of Emergency Medicine

The Emergency Medicine Department provides fourth-year students with an elective rotation in the emergency centers of Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center and Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital. There is a separate clinical clerkship for Memorial Hermann (EMER  4001) and for LBJ (EMER  4004).

The clinical activities of the rotation are monitored by the department’s faculty and house staff. The Memorial Hermann Emergency Center (EC) offers clinical experience typical of a large private institution and has the advantage of being a Level I Trauma Center. Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center also has Life Flight, one of the oldest and busiest emergency medical air transport helicopter services in the country. The current patient volume seen at the Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center EC approximates 61,000 patients per year.

The emergency center at LBJ Hospital is representative of the busy public EC found in many metropolitan areas. The annual census is more than 80,000. This hospital’s patient population is typical of the underserved indigent populations across the country.

During this rotation, students have the opportunity to work side by side with emergency medicine faculty and residents from this and other major disciplines. The students interact with all of the consulting surgical and medical services. The rotation is designed to familiarize the students with the practice of emergency medicine with emphasis on the diagnosis and treatment of the wide spectrum of diseases commonly seen in emergency centers.