Field medicine

Field medicine encompasses, managing and performing medical services in the pre-hospital or non-hospital context, variously by emergency medical technicians under medical control or directly by advanced practitioners delivering advanced care outside the hospital. It has important synergies with emergency management dealing with multiple casualty and mass casualty incidents, as well as triage, but it is also concerned with single-victim situations. Much is concerned with trauma, but also with medical emergencies, especially dealing with large-scale poisoning, infections, or effects of weapons of mass destruction.

Field medicine is now a recognized subspecialty of emergency medicine. Within field medicine, there are also areas of interest that include wilderness medicine, battlefield medicine and disaster medicine.