Emergency Medicine

The Department of Emergency Medicine of the First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University began to be established in 1987 and was formally founded as a department in 1988. Its first director was Professor Zhang Yiduan. After the dedicated efforts, perseverance, and painstaking development of several generations, it has now developed into a comprehensive discipline integrating medical care, teaching, and research, and has become a first-class regional center in Southwest China for the diagnosis and treatment of acute and critical illnesses, as well as difficult and complicated diseases. In 2013, it became a key discipline of Chongqing Municipality; in 2020, it was approved as a Chongqing municipal clinical key specialty (premium project), and it was officially designated as such in 2023. In the 2022 China Hospital Science and Technology Evaluation ranking, it placed 49th. The Department of Emergency Medicine of the First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University currently consists of the Emergency Medicine Departments of the Yuanjiagang, Jinshan, and Jingwei campuses. Many members of the medical and nursing team hold academic positions, including committee member and standing committee member, in national-level professional societies such as the Chinese Medical Association and the Chinese Medical Doctor Association.

After nearly 40 years of construction and development, the Department of Emergency Medicine has established an integrated emergency medical service model combining “pre-hospital emergency care—in-hospital emergency care—intensive care,” striving to achieve the emergency-care goals of “a call for help immediately triggering emergency care, and boarding the ambulance meaning admission begins.” It has continuously improved the support capacity and management level of its information systems. With the Department of Emergency Medicine as the supporting platform, it has established green channels for five major centers and their priority diseases: the Stroke Center, Trauma Center, Chest Pain Center, Critical Pregnant and Postpartum Women Treatment Center, and Hemoptysis Center. These are centrally managed and uniformly coordinated by the hospital, effectively promoting the delivery of specialist treatment skills at an earlier stage. The department has cultivated a professional emergency medical team with both integrity and ability and outstanding technical expertise. It is equipped with advanced emergency instruments and equipment, including multifunctional defibrillators, cardiopulmonary resuscitation machines, multifunctional gastric lavage machines, video laryngoscopes, fiberoptic bronchoscopes, ventilators, CRRT machines, and ECMO. It can provide patients with acute and critical illnesses with core and cutting-edge emergency treatment technologies, including cardiopulmonary resuscitation, ECPR, artificial airway establishment, respiratory support, circulatory monitoring and treatment, extracorporeal life-support therapy, bedside fiberoptic bronchoscopy diagnosis and treatment, comprehensive bedside ultrasound assessment, ultrasound-guided invasive procedures for high-risk patients, bedside blood purification, comprehensive treatment of acute poisoning, and standardized treatment for injuries caused by insects and animals, among others. It can also provide patients with critical illnesses such as AECOPD, post-cardiopulmonary-cerebral resuscitation syndrome, acute stroke, and severe acute pancreatitis with specialized integrated Chinese and Western medicine treatment. The department receives and transfers more than 2,000 patients annually through “120” emergency services; its annual total emergency volume exceeds 140,000 visits; it conducts more than 7,000 critical rescues annually, with a success rate exceeding 98%; it observes more than 23,000 patients annually, and its ICU admits more than 3,200 patients. The service radius of pre-hospital emergency care and long-distance patient transfers extends to all districts of Chongqing and neighboring provinces and cities.

The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University is the principal institution of the National (Chongqing) Emergency Medical Rescue Team. Medical and nursing personnel from the Department of Emergency Medicine form the backbone of the rescue team and have actively participated in and successfully completed numerous emergency medical rescue missions for sudden public incidents, including the Wenchuan earthquake, Lushan earthquake, Ludian earthquake in Yunnan, Nepal earthquake, and prevention and control of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2017, the Chongqing-China-France Emergency and Disaster Medicine Cooperation Center was approved; in 2022, the hospital was approved as a national Chest Pain Center and as a construction unit for a cardiopulmonary resuscitation training base.

The Department of Emergency Medicine Teaching and Research Section of the First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University was approved as a master’s degree-awarding site in 2000 and a doctoral degree-awarding site in 2006, and was approved as a standardized residency training base for emergency medicine in 2014. It currently undertakes undergraduate teaching in Emergency and Disaster Medicine and Clinical Skills, while also providing multilevel training for undergraduates, postgraduate students, and visiting trainees. It also participates in standardized residency training, transfer training for general practitioners, and various continuing-education programs. Each year, it trains more than 500 undergraduate medical students of various types enrolled at the university; since 2015, it has trained more than 100 postgraduate students specializing in acute and critical illnesses. Each year, it receives more than 600 residents for standardized-training rotations and specialty training, as well as more than 20 general practitioners for emergency-related transfer training. It has received the Third Prize for Teaching Achievement of Chongqing Municipality.

In recent years, the influence of the Department of Emergency Medicine has increased significantly, and its research foundation has become increasingly substantial. It has successively received funding for five projects from the National Natural Science Foundation of China and more than 10 projects from provincial- and ministerial-level and Chongqing Municipal Health Bureau research funds. It has received more than RMB 3 million in various research funding, published more than 100 SCI papers, and published more than 50 papers in CSCD core journals, Chinese core journals, and statistical-source journals. In 2020, the Chongqing Clinical Research Center for Acute and Critical Illnesses was approved.