Glossary
Emergency Medicine Physician Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential emergency medicine physician terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key emergency medicine physician vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in emergency medicine physician training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- ACLS
- Advanced cardiac life support.
- Boarding
- Admitted patients waiting in the ED.
- Chest tube
- Drains air or blood from the chest.
- Disposition
- Admit, transfer or discharge.
- EMTALA
- Law requiring emergency screening.
- FAST exam
- Ultrasound for internal bleeding.
- Intubation
- Placing a breathing tube.
- Reduction
- Putting a joint back in place.
- Resuscitation
- Reviving a patient.
- Sepsis
- Dangerous infection response.
- Sign-out
- Handoff between shifts.
- Stroke alert
- Rapid stroke response.
- Toxidrome
- Pattern of poisoning symptoms.
- Trauma activation
- Rapid team response to injury.
- Triage
- Sorting patients by urgency.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Emergency Medicine Physician practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Emergency Medicine Physician training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.