Emergency medicine in Norway: The road to specialty recognition

Abstract Emergency medicine (EM) in most of Europe is a much newer specialty than in the United States. Until recently, emergency departments (EDs) in Norway were staffed with unsupervised interns, leading to a government report in 2008 that called for change. From the establishment of the Norwegian...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Gayle Galletta, Kåre Løvstakken
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2020-10-01
Series:Journal of the American College of Emergency Physicians Open
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1002/emp2.12197
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Abstract Emergency medicine (EM) in most of Europe is a much newer specialty than in the United States. Until recently, emergency departments (EDs) in Norway were staffed with unsupervised interns, leading to a government report in 2008 that called for change. From the establishment of the Norwegian Society for Emergency Medicine in 2010 to the creation of the specialty in 2017 and the approval of the first emergency physician in Norway in 2019, our review article describes how a small group of physicians were able to work with politicians and the media to get an emergency medicine specialty approved despite resistance from a much larger group of existing specialists. Norway faced many of the same obstacles as the United States did with implementing the specialty 60 years ago. This article serves as a review of the conflict that may ensue when enacting a change in public policy and a resource to those countries that have yet to implement an emergency medicine specialty.
ISSN:2688-1152