In most cases, you will not have the opportunity to choose your own emergency medicine doctor. Emergency situations are generally handled by the doctor who is already onsite at a medical hospital or treatment center, and then follow up care is done by a more specialized physician. After you are stabilized after an initial examination and treatment, you may be able to request further treatment from your own doctor or through a physician the emergency medicine doctor recommends. If you are in the emergency room for a long time, you may receive care from more than one physician.
Medical centers generally have one or more emergency medicine doctor on staff during set business hours. When you are taken to the hospital in an emergency situation, you are generally taken into the ER and treated by whichever doctors and nurses are on duty during that particular shift. There is often no time to debate on which doctor you would rather see for the beginning of your treatment.
Once you are stabilized and a cause of your illness or injury has been found, you may be able to be more choosy when picking a doctor to continue your treatment. This will depend on whether or not additional treatments will be performed in the same hospital, or whether you will be an outpatient. If you will be confined to the hospital, you may be limited in the doctors you can choose from because certain hospitals only allow doctors affiliated with them to operate inside of their walls.
If you are able to make your own decisions on care following your initial treatment from an emergency medicine doctor, you may ask another physician, such as your family doctor, for a recommendation. Depending on your area, you may have few options. This will also be partially dependent on what your ailment is and your insurance plan coverage.
In the event that you are receiving care for multiple days and you feel as though your emergency medicine doctor is not giving you adequate care, you may be able to request an alternate physician. This will depend on availability at your hospital. If your current doctor is behaving in ways which you feel are unethical or dangerous, speak to an authority at the hospital in which you are staying.
