Emergency Medicine

When an injury or sudden illness occurs, it is important to seek high-quality medical care - fast. As always, in a critical emergency situation, immediately dial 911. For other circumstances when medical care is immediately necessary, MeritCare offers the Emergency Center.

Emergency Care Team

At the Emergency Center, you will be treated by one of 13 experienced emergency doctors who work exclusively for MeritCare in the specialty of emergency medicine. Our staff also includes over 70 registered nurses and 30 assistive staff. Our registered nurses receive the following educational preparation for their roles:

• Basic Life Support
• Advanced Cardiac Life Support
• Trauma Nurse Core Course
• Concepts in Advanced Trauma Nursing
• Emergency Nurse Pediatric Course
• Hazmat Awareness Education
• Non-violent Crisis Intervention
• Triage Course

Many of our registered nurses are trained as Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners (SANE) and one of them is on call 24/7 to provide care and collect evidence for sexual assault victims.

Timing of Emergency Care

When you arrive, you will be greeted by an experienced member of the Emergency Center team who will evaluate your condition utilizing the Emergency Severity Index system. It is important that the most seriously ill/ injured patients be treated first. Patients are seen based on priority of their condition, not on a first come first serve basis.

The MeritCare Emergency Center treats over 45,000 patients per year. As patients are seen based on the severity of the medical emergency, we apologize for not being able to take all patients to an exam room immediately. Please understand that our nurse has assessed your condition and determined the priority of care based on the assessment. If your condition changes or feel worse, please let the nurse know. We will do our very best to have you seen by a doctor as quickly as we can.