A&E or not A&E
I work in a UK A&E department. That’s Accident and Emergency (NOT ‘Anything and Everything’ as it sometimes feels.)
A lot of senior A&E docs in the UK, members of the College of Emergency Medicine usually, get very precious about what our medical specialty is called. They certainly don’t like ‘Casualty’, a name whose roots are planted in the dim and distant past, when patients without a referral note from their family doctor could come to hospital as ‘casual’ attenders instead. But ‘Casualty’ is nice and snappy, and the name of a popular BBC TV Show as well.
They are not that keen on ‘Accident and Emergency’ either, and prefer the American term ‘Emergency Department’, or ED. That means they can also say they work in the ‘ER’ (emergency room) which makes them feel like George Clooney. But if you Google ‘ED’, all you usually get back is stuff about erectile dysfunction.
So I’m going to stick to referring to my specialty as ‘A&E’ for now. Because a lot of my work is to do with accidents, and some of it is to do with medical emergencies. And most UK hospitals still have signage that directs people towards ‘A&E’, not towards the ‘ER.’
