3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

What constitutes an “emergency” in medicine? How has our understanding of emergencies evolved over time in response to historical events, cultural shifts, popular media, and changes in the healthcare system? How has this contributed to the development of the specialty of emergency medicine? In what ways does time, urgency, and emergency differ when one is within the walls of the hospital? This course will use a multimodal approach to tackle various facets of an “emergency” in medicine – for instance, comparing how healthcare practitioners conceptualize “emergency” vs the how the broader population views emergencies, considering the development and implications of the concept of triage, and evaluating the provision of emergency care in times of crisis such as natural disasters or the recent COVID-19 pandemic. This course will also offer a unique local look at what “emergency” means at Johns Hopkins - we will leverage the Chesney Medical Archives to understand how emergency care has evolved across time locally at Johns Hopkins, and students will also have the opportunity to shadow the course instructor (an emergency physician) in the Johns Hopkins Emergency Department.