International Emergency Medicine Division
The Department of Emergency Medicine at LAC+USC recognizes an emerging global health care community. Dedicated to improving emergency medical care throughout the world, our physicians and nurses continue to collaborate with many large foreign academic centers, medical schools, and international organizations.
Our efforts range from helping develop emergency medicine as a specialty internationally, guest lecturing at international conferences, intensive courses on a wide array of emergency topics, a new fellowship in international emergency medicine, and continued research in tropical medicine.
One of the thrilling aspects of living in Los Angeles is enjoying the diverse cultural atmosphere evident throughout the city. With its close proximity to the Mexican border, in addition to its pivotal role as a central hub for entry into the United ¬States, many of our emergency department patients at LAC+USC are recent immigrants or international travelers. To improve our diagnostic abilities, tropical infectious diseases have become an important part of our emergency medicine training, a basic knowledge of which is fundamental for any physician working with these populations of patients. Past lectures have emphasized the diagnostic approach to fever in the returned traveler, tropical causes of space occupying lesions of the hepatobiliary tree diagnosed by bedside ultrasound, leprosy, malaria, and tropical skin ulcers.