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Q. Is acute care surgery only available to me in the emergency department? A. No. The ACS team is available to assist with surgical emergencies throughout the hospital. If a routine medical or surgical problem develops into an urgent surgical problem while the patient is in the hospital, the ACS team is available 24/7 to assist in their care. This may be an important consideration when deciding where to get your non-emergent care. Q. How is an acute care surgery (ACS) model different than the care I get at my local hospital? A. Most emergency department doctors see patients with surgical problems and then call the on-call surgeon at home. Then the emergency medicine doctor and the surgeon determine a treatment plan over the phone. In the ACS model, a surgeon remains in the hospital and is available for face-to-face consultation and operation (if needed) within minutes. Q. How does an acute care surgeon differ from the on-call surgeon at my hospital? A. While general surgery training is standardized, the day-to-day practice of surgeons varies widely. Emergency departments face an increasingly difficult problem of finding surgeons willing to take night call. As a result, the individual surgeon on call may or may not have experience managing emergency surgical problems. Problems as basic as appendicitis or cholecystitis may not be part of the usual practice for a breast surgeon. A surgeon on an ACS team manages acute surgical emergencies on a daily basis. Furthermore, a fellowship program in ACS has evolved along with surgical critical care training. Surgeons with this additional one or two years of training in the management of critical illness and surgical emergencies are much better prepared to take care of these situations. Questions? Contact the Acute Care Surgery Services at |
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