The United Kingdom and the United States first recognised the need for a hospital-based specialty of Emergency Medicine in the early 1970s and were closely followed by Canada and Australia. However, similar developments were not seen on mainland Europe until 1994, when the European Society for Emergency Medicine (EuSEM) was established. Its main aims were to promote the establishment of Emergency Medicine as a primary specialty in individual countries and to develop common standards of specialty training across Europe by agreeing a core curriculum and a 5-year programme of specialty training.
This article traces the development of Emergency Medicine as a hospital-based specialty in Europe over the last 20 years.
Emergency Medicine is now established as a primary specialty in 17 of the 28 member countries of the European Union as well as Turkey. Moreover, in October 2014, the EuSEM celebrated its twentieth anniversary during a congress in Amsterdam attended by more than 2400 delegates.