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Best Books on Emergency Medicine (2022 Review)

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Knowing what to do in emergency situations is a key requirement of the medical profession. Whether you’re a doctor or other healthcare professional, your knowledge of emergency medicine determines how much you’d be able to help in the reduction of avoidable mortalities that happen in emergency rooms — especially those that result from confusion or carelessness on the part of healthcare professionals.

Since emergency medicine is a wide field that is ever-changing, it’s important for you as a healthcare professional, student doctor, or student nurse to keep learning it and never stop. More importantly, regardless of your specialty you will witness medical emergencies (once in a while, at least), where you’d be expected to take actions that will save lives. And the knowledge of what to do in these situations must always be at your fingertips — your specialty notwithstanding.

best books on emergency medicine

One of the best ways to learn emergency medicine is to invest in good books on the subject. Here, we’ll be looking at some of the best books on emergency medicine.

Best Emergency Medicine Textbooks

If what you’re looking for is a book that digs into the deepest depths of emergency medicine, then you would need to get a textbook on the subject rather than a handbook, which is usually much smaller. Here are some of the best emergency medicine textbooks available in the market.

#1. Tintinalli’s Emergency Medicine

Tintinalli’s Emergency Medicine is one of the most widely recommended books on emergency medicine. In fact, some experts have described it as the “Bible” of emergency care. While there is no single textbook that covers everything that you need to know in emergency medicine, this text covers almost all.

From emergency situations in adult medicine to those in pediatrics, ob-gyn, and other specialties, this book has got you covered. In addition to covering emergencies seen every day in the ER, this book covers other less common emergency situations, such as substance abuse, psychosocial disorders, sexual assault, and domestic violence. It also covers other issues such as palliative care, transplant patient issues, prison medicine, military medicine, and legal issues related to emergency care.

  • Authors: Judith E. Tintinalli (Editor-in-Chief), J. Stephan Stapczynski, O. John Ma, Donald M. Yealy, Garth D. Meckler, David M. Cline
  • Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education/ Medical
  • Current Edition: 8th edition (November 2015)
  • Pages: 2176

>>> Buy Now or Rent on Amazon.com

#2. Rosen’s Emergency Medicine: Concepts and Clinical Practice

This is another widely recommended authoritative text on emergency medicine. The current edition is published in two volumes — a warning sign that this textbook isn’t for someone who merely wants to scratch the subject of emergency medicine on the surface. If you’re looking for a book that explains emergency medical care with clarity, authority, and comprehensiveness, then you won’t go wrong with this.

Aside its regular pages, Rosen’s Emergency Medicine contains cardinal presentations that provide simple and quick guidance on differential diagnosis. It also features over 1200 awesome color illustrations that depict real-life appearances of patients in different emergency situations as well as typical clinical and laboratory findings that will help you arrive at the correct diagnosis within the shortest time possible.

  • Authors: Ron Walls MD, Robert Hockberger MD, Marianne Gausche-Hill MD FACEP FAAP
  • Publisher: Elsevier
  • Current Edition: 9th edition (June 2017)
  • Pages: 2688

>>> Buy Now or Rent on Amazon.com

#3. Avoiding Common Errors in the Emergency Department

Sometimes, you find it easier to master a subject when you work your way through from the “wrongs” to the “rights”. That’s the exact approach adopted in Avoiding Common Errors in the Emergency Department, which discusses over 360 errors commonly made in the emergency room. More importantly, the book gives practical and easy-to-recall tips on how to avoid these common mistakes.

Contrary to what obtains with most other texts on emergency medicine, this handbook is rendered in a conversational, easy-to-read style. And its chapters are concise and evidence-based. So, you can easily glance through the book before starting a rotation or use it for quick reference while on call. In addition to aspects of emergency medicine related to each organ system, the book covers other aspects such as psychiatry, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, anesthesia, urology, ENT, and oral and maxillofacial surgery.

  • Authors: Amal Mattu MD, Arjun S. Chanmugam MD MBA, Stuart P. Swadron MD FRCP(C) FACEP, Dale Woolridge MD PhD, Michael Winters
  • Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education/ Medical
  • Current Edition: Second edition (April 2017)
  • Pages: 1080

>>> Buy Now or Rent on Amazon.com

#4. CURRENT Diagnosis and Treatment Emergency Medicine

As its name implies, this textbook is an instant guide to current practices in the diagnosis, treatment, and management of emergency cases. If you’re looking for a text that isn’t as voluminous as the two above, and yet more detailed than the handbooks reviewed below, then this book is your best bet.

As you would expect from any medical text, CURRENT Diagnosis and Treatment Emergency Medicine reflects the latest breakthroughs in medical practice, and it contains lots of high-quality illustrations drawn to help simply complex concepts.

All the information in this textbook is presented in a priority-based and problem-oriented organization. It includes every aspect of emergency medicine, not leaving out pediatric and neonatal emergencies and trauma. And to help you make quick decisions in emergency situations, there are extensive “at-a-glance” algorithms and flow charts that facilitate systematic, yet rapid decision making.

  • Authors: Keith Stone, Roger L. Humphries
  • Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education / Medical
  • Current Edition: 8th edition (July 2017)
  • Pages: 1072

>>> Buy Now or Rent on Amazon.com

Best Handbooks on Emergency Medicine

If you’d rather prefer a text on emergency medicine that you can read on the go and quickly take a glance at whenever the need arises, then consider buying a handbook on the subject rather than a full-blown textbook like the ones above. Here are some of the best handbooks on emergency medicine.

#1. Tintinalli’s Emergency Medicine Manual

A smaller version of the Tintinalli’s Emergency Medicine textbook, this handbook covers the most clinically relevant aspects explained in the main textbook. Rendered in full color, the handbook covers the full spectrum of emergency care in different categories of people: adults, children, pregnant women, etc. And being a summarized version of the main textbook, its chapters are concise and focus on clinical presentations, their differential diagnoses, and emergency management protocols.

Since pictures occupy less space, and yet do better at explanation than text, they have been generously employed in this handbook. So, expect to see lots of photographs and illustrations that will help you to better understand how to manage emergencies in a skillful and timely manner.

  • Authors: Rita K. Cydulka, David M. Cline, O. John Ma, Michael T. Fitch, Scott A. Joing, Vincent J. Wang
  • Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education / Medical
  • Current Edition: 8th edition (August 2017)
  • Pages: 1088

>>> Buy Now or Rent on Amazon.com

#2. Pocket Emergency Medicine (Pocket Notebook Series)

Pocket Emergency Medicine is an ultra-concise, easy-to-navigate loose-leaf handbook that focuses on various emergency presentations and their management protocols. In less than 350 short pages, the handbook reviews the whole subject of emergency medicine — starting from history taking and clinical examinations to differential diagnosis, and to management.

The handbook covers emergencies related to all the body’s organ systems as well as those related to pediatrics, psychiatric disorders, poisons and drug abuse, trauma, environmental dangers, and so on. And the pieces information therein are rendered in bulleted lists, algorithm flowcharts, tables, and diagrams.

  • Authors: Richard Zane MD, Joshua M. Kosowsky MD FACEP
  • Publisher: LWW
  • Current Edition: 4th edition (January 2018)
  • Pages: 334

>>> Buy Now or Rent on Amazon.com

#3. The Chief Complaint

As its name implies, this handbook covers the diagnosis and management of emergency cases using the chief complaint as guide. Since it’s a concise text that can only take so much, the handbook uses an algorithmic approach to explain the management of the commonest complaints encountered in the emergency room.

The handbook is designed with color codes by organ system to aid navigation and quick referencing. And it includes a journal club feature, which encourages you to research deeper into the evidence basis of the clinical decisions you make in the emergency room.

  • Author: Dr Chris Ciprian Feier
  • Publisher: 5150 Publishing
  • Current Edition: (November 2014)
  • Pages: 220

>>> Buy Now or Rent on Amazon.com

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