Mediterranean Journal of Emergency Medicine & Acute Care

Emergency physicians are used to not knowing all of the facts. Our professional brain is trained to gather all of the immediately available data which can reasonably be obtained within the time constraints of the emergency department and then decide and act. This timeframe can be seconds or minutes but not usually more than a couple of hours. We do not have the luxury of expansive history gathering, data collection, discussion, and reflection. Every emergency physician has had to come to terms with the stressful reality of having to decide something really important without enough information. We make the decision to admit or discharge and then have to move on to the next patient. Just think for a second about how long you really deliberate on whether or not to admit the 45-year-old guy with chest pain with the normal EKG. You do not have the luxury of time in making decisions and this is the dilemma of the decision-making process which separates different types of physicians.