Campaign Themes - Emergency Medicine Day

2025

Proud to provide your emergency care

The 2025 Emergency Medicine Day campaign was focused on professional satisfaction, highlighting the importance of supporting healthcare workers’ morale, motivation, and overall wellbeing. The theme emphasized that when professionals feel valued and fulfilled, patient care quality improves.

The campaign underscored the need for supportive, well-organized, and positive working environments for doctors, nurses, and paramedics, reinforcing that fostering professional satisfaction on the front line benefits both staff and patients.

Our Hybrid EM Day webinar for EM Day 2025 was attended by a record number of participants.

2024

Climate change is a health emergency, too!

The 2024 Emergency Medicine Day campaign highlighted the impact of climate change on Emergency Medicine teams and people. The powerful and moving testimonies from our colleagues and patients highlighted the urgent need for action to bring this issue to everyone’s attention.

Climate change is humanity’s biggest health threat currently, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). “Climate change is impacting people’s health in a myriad of ways, including: Leading to death and illness from increasingly frequent extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, storms and floods, disruption of food systems, fires, an increase in zoonoses and food-, water- and vector-borne diseases, and mental health issues.

2023

Your safety – our priority

In 2023, the Emergency Medicine Day campaign was dedicated to safety – safety for patients who need care, attention and relief from pain and disease.
Ensuring safety for colleagues means providing a secure working environment with appropriate working hours and a manageable number of patients, allowing sufficient time and energy for each case. Only under these conditions can we guarantee that patients receive truly safe and effective care in an emergency.

In the past, EM personnel, doctors, nurses and paramedics, were able to manage a prolonged disaster like the pandemic, using the strength that comes in an exceptional situation and the hope that everything will end. The pandemic is past but the working conditions have not improved. In last year’s campaign, we demonstrated how the risk of burn out is high among EM workforce and how the idea of giving up is creeping in.
Now we have learned that the patients and ourselves need to be allied with one voice to ask for more safety for all. We want to go on taking care of our patients, it is our job and our mission, but we want to do it with the necessary calm that they deserve.
It is time for action. We are asking to raise your voice, whether you are an EM professional or a patient, and communicate what is needed to the managers and administrators.
We are asking for your pictures, your statements, your testimonies.
For professionals: we want to know how your workplace and your environment feels to you. Do you feel safe and protected, and respected as a person?
For patients: We want to know if you feel safe when you need to go to the ED and what is important for you
Let us join together on 27 May this year to highlight better safety in the Emergency Medical System!
References
Petrino R, Riesgo LG, Yilmaz B. Burnout in emergency medicine professionals after 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic: a threat to the healthcare system? Eur J Emerg Med. 2022 Aug 1;29(4):279-284. doi: 10.1097/MEJ.0000000000000952. Epub 2022 Jun 22. PMID: 35620812; PMCID: PMC9241557.
Khoury A. Burnout syndrome in emergency medicine: it’s time to take action. Eur J Emerg Med. 2022 Aug 1;29(4):239-240. doi: 10.1097/MEJ.0000000000000949. Epub 2022 May 27. PMID: 35620811.
Petrino R, Castrillo LG, Yilmaz B, Dodt C, Tuunainen E, Khoury A; Emergency Medicine Day working group. Policy statement on minimal standards for safe working conditions in Emergency Medicine. Eur J Emerg Med. 2022 Dec 1;29(6):389-390. doi: 10.1097/MEJ.0000000000000985. PMID: 36243015.

Healthcare professionals’ perceptions of patient safety in European
emergency departments: a comparative analysis of survey results

2022

We take care of you, please take care of us

In 2022, the campaign focused on the nature of working in emergency medicine – that those working in it are constantly under stress, and this stress increased greatly during the pandemic. People suffered from fatigue, burn-out and depression, and many emergency departments were understaffed, putting the quality of the healthcare they could provide at risk. It is vital that emergency medicine professionals get the following: more attention, better recognition and improved working conditions.

This should be addressed by the stakeholders and politicians for constructive change. We need to make sure that they are aware. Help raising the awareness by advocating for EM-Day through all your and our media channels. You can start by sharing your story, sharing the logo or other materials from our material page, organise an event or activity, contact your local media and send in an editorial or do an interview. There are so many ways to support the EM-Day campaign. #emergencymedicineday @emergencyday @emergencymedicineday @emergency_day

2021

We are always there for you

A call to the people to support the Emergency Medical System
The international Emergency Medicine Day (EM-Day) on the 27th of May, launched by EUSEM (European Society for Emergency Medicine), came back for its fourth consecutive year. EUSEM organizes EM Day to promote and raise awareness worldwide of how a well-organized Emergency Medicine System increases the possibility of patient survival while also reducing the rate of disabilities following medical emergencies. COVID-19 made very clear that a free and accessible Emergency-Medicine System is essential in facing all the challenges that something like a pandemic brings.

The EM system is relying on certified and skilled professionals. Who would have thought that the professionals would be put to the test for so long. Physicians, nurses, paramedics and technicians in the front lines, are feeling the grave impact of this pandemic: high pressure, exhaustion, burn-out and sickness. The people have been grateful, applauding the best intentions of the work-force who are managing with a lack of personnel, lack of resources and lack of protective measures. Transporting patients to other hospitals to provide good care for everybody. Working double shifts to cover for infected colleagues, neglecting their own families for the good cause. The pandemic uncovered the weaknesses of the EM system in each country, each with their specific problems. Now is the time to let the people know they and their loved ones are vulnerable in a lacking system and something needs to be done to lower the risk of improper treatment and prolonged sickness. CALL FOR SUPPORT We ask all the people to support EM-Day and ask for a system that is more resistant to pandemics, better resourced with staff and materials and not overcrowded. Everybody can contribute by taking care of prevention: Wear masks, helmets and seatbelts, wash your hands and watch your symptoms carefully. Together we can bring some relieve to the professionals.
WE HAVE TO GUARANTEE THAT THE CARE PROVIDERS CAN ALWAYS BE THERE FOR US.

2020

For a better emergency care ask for more

The theme for 2020 came from the observation that in many places in the world there is a shortage of specialists in emergency medicine, both because there is no specialty and because the number of doctors with competence in emergency medicine is too small due to economic restrictions and poor awareness of what is required in terms of public investment.

The same counts for nurses and other personnel and for the resources and the organization of Emergency Services, where in many countries the equipment and pathways are insufficient and unsafe for the population. We could never even imagine that in a few months, something would happen that put such a big accent on our request. The Covid-19 pandemic has made this theme appropriate and evident like never before. In those countries that have been hit hard by the SARS-Cov2, the Emergency medical system, both pre-hospital and emergency departments, had to face a situation of disaster medicine, growing exponentially for several weeks. They had to organize pathways, implement the correct use of PPE, allocate, and manage resources, human and material, manage critical patients, adapting to the events according to safety and efficacy. It is clear that where there is sufficient personnel, competent in all these tasks, where the structure is well equipped, modern and prepared for unexpected big events, everything went smoother and the outcome was better. It is time that we and you all make our voice loud to ask for more resources, more doctors, nurses, and structure, for the Emergency Medical System.

2019 + 2018

Competence makes the difference

In 2018 and 2019, the focus of the campaigns was on the fact that Emergency Medical care is better performed with competent professionals – doctors specialising in emergency medicine, nurses trained in emergency and acute care, paramedics, technicians, support personnel who are competent and working in organized structures and systems dedicated to emergency medical care.

To show to people and governments that this organization makes a difference in terms of morbidity, mortality, and cost-effectiveness. The main mission of Emergency Medicine Day is to higher the level of competence around the world. Competence also means access. Giving people in remote and underdeveloped areas access to emergency medical care. This will be the campaign theme in the first years of EM-Day. Our mission has to be made clear.