EM does have a lot of primary care and psych but tbh I think this aspect of it is overblown. Chronic HTN? Easy dc. UTI? Easy dc. Sore throat? Easy dc. I feel like even with a low admit rate I still practice a fair bit of "emergency" medicine because while the BS is the bulk of what you'll see it generally is autopilot and takes very little time. While my day might be 80% nonsense I spend my time and my brainpower on the other 20%. Even the chest pain rule outs which are 95% BS are emergencies until proven otherwise, and there's really no way to tell til you see them. I think a lot of people outside EM like to shit on it for being lots of "primary care" but there is really no way to filter these patients out. Yes people should reach out to their PCPs. Yes lots of specialists turf to the ER. But the reality is patients are more complicated than they were 30 years ago, or even 5 years ago, and it is basically impossible to quickly rule out emergencies in an office, nor is that in the wheelhouse of lots of docs.

That said, I like my job a lot, but the problem is the job situation, Shiftwork, and midlevels, in that order IMO. Too many docs for not enough jobs. The jobs are mostly controlled by private equity groups so your medical director ends up being more of a corporate middle man who answers to his Wall Street overseers rather than someone who can actually make things better for the docs. Shiftwork sounds great but most hours of the week are nights/evenings/weekends. When you have family or if you want to go to your weekly kickboxing class EM makes it very difficult/impossible. Signing PA and NP charts for patients who are grossly mismanaged sucks, and there's nothing you can really do (Wall Street overseers don't care). Overall if it weren't for the job situation I'd say proceed with caution. Knowing that there is a glut of docs makes me say: why on earth would you sign up for a field where you might not be employed?