---
title: "Emergency Medicine Physician"
description: "Make immediate medical decisions and act to prevent death or further disability. Provide immediate recognition, evaluation, care, stabilization, and…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/emergency-medicine-physician"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Emergency Medicine Physician

**Category:** Healthcare Practitioners and Technical · **SOC code:** 29-1214 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 29-1214.00

Make immediate medical decisions and act to prevent death or further disability. Provide immediate recognition, evaluation, care, stabilization, and disposition of patients. May direct emergency medical staff in an emergency department.

Also advertised as: Attending Emergency Physician; Attending Physician; Emergency MD (Emergency Medicine Doctor); Emergency Medicine Physician (EM Physician); Emergency Physician; MD (Medical Doctor); Physician.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $335,550 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $161.32/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $103,610 to $495,910, with the middle half between $184,830 and $418,890
- **Total US employment:** 32,880
- **Typical entry education:** Doctorate
- **Preparation required:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +3.2% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 900 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 46/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 32,880 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $103,610 |
| 25th | $184,830 |
| 50th (median) | $335,550 |
| 75th | $418,890 |
| 90th | $495,910 |
| Mean (average) | $317,480 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| RI | $512,730 | $501,300 | 290 |
| WV | $491,230 | $548,879 | 300 |
| MO | $456,280 | $502,417 | Not published by BLS |
| AK | $452,620 | $442,189 | 190 |
| MD | $451,620 | $430,282 | 550 |
| VT | $430,820 | $439,801 | 130 |
| IA | $429,050 | $488,879 | 290 |
| CT | $418,940 | $404,343 | 470 |
| MI | $417,760 | $434,185 | 910 |
| NM | $405,130 | $439,346 | 340 |
| SD | $393,870 | $444,619 | 170 |
| ND | $392,890 | $441,653 | 150 |
| MN | $390,940 | $396,406 | 990 |
| WA | $380,870 | $355,910 | Not published by BLS |
| OH | $377,480 | $406,881 | 1,170 |

31 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 46 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/emergency-medicine-physician/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/emergency-medicine-physician.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 34,900 in the 2025–2035 base year to 36,100 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 1,100 jobs, or +3.2%. About as fast as average: 3.2% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 900 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Doctoral or professional degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** Internship/residency.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Post-Doctoral Training | 62.1% |
| Doctoral Degree | 34.5% |
| First Professional Degree | 3.5% |

## What the work involves

- Select, request, perform, or interpret diagnostic procedures, such as laboratory tests, electrocardiograms, emergency ultrasounds, and radiographs.
- Evaluate patients' vital signs or laboratory data to determine emergency intervention needs and priority of treatment.
- Perform emergency resuscitations on patients.
- Stabilize patients in critical condition.
- Perform such medical procedures as emergent cricothyrotomy, endotracheal intubation, and emergency thoracotomy.
- Analyze records, examination information, or test results to diagnose medical conditions.
- Consult with hospitalists and other professionals, such as social workers, regarding patients' hospital admission, continued observation, transition of care, or discharge.
- Conduct primary patient assessments that include information from prior medical care.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Active Listening — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Social Perceptiveness — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Negotiation — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Medicine and Dentistry — importance 5.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Biology — importance 4.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Psychology — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Therapy and Counseling — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 4.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Expression — importance 4.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Investigative (I), Social (S), Conventional (C).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| I — Investigative | 5.64 |
| S — Social | 5.60 |
| C — Conventional | 4.22 |
| R — Realistic | 4.15 |
| E — Enterprising | 2.68 |
| A — Artistic | 1.00 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ISFJ | 66.7 |
| ISTJ | 65.5 |
| ESTJ | 59.2 |
| ISTP | 56.9 |
| ESFJ | 55.4 |

Best-fitting types: ISFJ, ISTJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Paramedic](https://nuecareer.com/careers/paramedic) — median $60,600
- [Pediatric Surgeon](https://nuecareer.com/careers/pediatric-surgeon) — median $559,030
- [Family Medicine Physician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/family-medicine-physician) — median $244,180
- [General Internal Medicine Physician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/general-internal-medicine-physician) — median $256,560
- [Physician Assistant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/physician-assistant) — median $135,880
- [Pediatrician, General](https://nuecareer.com/careers/pediatrician-general) — median $210,040
- [Anesthesiologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/anesthesiologist) — median $391,490
- [Obstetrician and Gynecologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/obstetrician-and-gynecologist) — median $292,910
- [Hospitalist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/hospitalist) — median $265,930
- [Psychiatrist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/psychiatrist) — median $281,870

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BLS OOH** — BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2025–2035 edition. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/emergency-medicine-physician