Department of
Emergency Medicine

Prehospital Medicine Experiences

EMS response vehicle with life flight helicopter

EM residents experience longitudinal pre-hospital medicine experience during their training at WVU, starting during their intern year. Components of the EMS experience include:

Interns spend Thursday and Friday afternoons during their PEM/EMS month completing a variety of EMS experiences, giving them an early introduction to a variety of areas in pre-hospital medicine, including ground operations, medical command, flight EMS, and event medicine.  (An added benefit of the PEM/EMS month is that interns get every weekend off to enjoy life outside the hospital)

Throughout the rest of their training, residents complete 1 EMS experience per quarter, which can include clinical experiences via ground or air shifts (Health Net aeromedical services), administrative EMS experiences, mass gathering EMS coverage, didactic EMS/teaching opportunities, EMS related QI opportunities, etc.  When combined with the experiences during intern year on PEM/EMS, our residents receive a broad-based, longitudinal EMS experience that position them well for EMS fellowship, EMS medical direction, or just having a great understanding of how EM physicians work with EMS to provide high quality care for patients on a day to day basis.

Residents have Medical command physician experience on every WVUH/Ruby shift as a PGY 2/3 resident.  WVU serves as the home for Medical Command for all EMS crews in a 27 county region throughout Northern, Central, and Eastern West Virginia.  You will learn how to help direct the prehospital care of critically ill patients and forge strong working relationships with EMS providers.

  • Regularly scheduled EMS “experiences” per quarter,  which can include clinical experiences via ground or air shifts (Health Net aeromedical services), administrative EMS experiences, mass gathering EMS coverage, didactic EMS/teaching opportunities, EMS related QI opportunities, etc.
  • Medical command physician experience on every shift as a PGY 2/3 resident.  WVU serves as the home for Medical Command for all EMS crews in a 27 county region throughout Northern, Central, and Eastern West Virginia.  You will learn how to help direct the prehospital care of critically ill patients and forge strong working relationships with EMS providers.

Finally, for those residents who are interested in EMS as a career, our EMS track offers opportunities to become more involved EMS including opportunities to serve as an Assistant Medical Director for a local EMS service.