Our Philosophy
Our program's educational mission is centered on its commitment to five essential elements that must be cultivated in residents for their full development into emergency medicine specialists:
First, during their training, Emergency Medicine residents must acquire the knowledge, skills, and judgment necessary to become expert and compassionate clinicians. Implicit in this process is the need for a broad, humanistic perspective on medicine and patient care.
Second, Emergency Medicine residents should come to appreciate that physicians are teachers. Emergency physicians must be able to share their knowledge not only with other physicians but also with medical students, nurses, paramedics, EMTs, and lay people.
Third, a training program should kindle the resident's intellectual curiosity and nurture the spirit of inquiry that leads to the generation of new knowledge through both basic and applied research.
Fourth, residents must emerge from their training with the administrative sophistication they will need to carry out the wide variety of leadership tasks that generally fall to the emergency physician in both the academic and community settings.
Fifth, Emergency Medicine residents should be challenged to hold themselves to the highest standards of clinical excellence and intellectual achievement, and to look forward to a lifetime of continuing education and professional development. They should be inspired to see themselves as active contributors to the field - potential leaders whose role it will be to further the development of our specialty and to help define emergency medicine's place in the health care environment of the future.
Collegiality among residents and faculty is the most powerful influence in assuring that these goals are achieved. This inspired camaraderie explains why so many residents look back on their three years of training as among the most exciting of their lives.
The institutions that sponsor the University of Pittsburgh Emergency Medicine Residency program have committed themselves to an educational program that is dedicated to the training of such physicians - individuals who, by virtue of excellence in clinical care, education, research, and administrative and leadership skills, will be among the next generation of leaders in emergency medicine.