The proposed study is descriptive in nature and aims to assess the public’s level of knowledge on emergency medicine in Beirut, Lebanon. A phone survey will be carried out, whereby participants will be asked questions on the procedures within the ED and about the physicians that staff them such as, the number of family members allowed in the ED, expected time to wait, if ED physicians perform surgery and whether or not emergency medicine is a specialty. Participants are a representative sample of the community in Beirut and must be above 18 years of age. The expected number of participants is 501. Ultimately, understanding the public’s knowledge of emergency medicine (both the procedures of the ER, the skillset of the emergency physician and the functioning of the system in general) is essential.  Without this understanding, efforts to improve services may be done without insight into the public’s expectations. Our hypothesis is that there is a general lack of understanding of what Emergency Medicine is, what emergency medicine physicians are and what they do.  If the results of this study bear out our hypothesis, it will provide impetus to the embryonic emergency medicine societies currently emerging in Lebanon to raise awareness in the public’s mind about what the ED is, who and what are ED physicians and the value of the services they provide.

articipants are a representative sample of the community in Beirut and must be above 18 years of age. The expected number of participants is 501.