Key Topics in Environmental Emergencies: 13 High-Yield Topics for MRCEM & FRCEM

Environmental emergencies are rare enough that nobody sees them often, and serious enough that the first hour decides the outcome. This book distils the RCEM environmental curriculum into 13 topics you can read in an evening — four pages each.

Written for MRCEM Intermediate and FRCEM SBA candidates, and for practising senior ED clinicians. It assumes clinical training. It is not an introduction for MRCEM Primary.

What's inside

• 13 key topics — hypothermia, frostbite, drowning, heat stroke, drug-related hyperthermia, diving and altitude illness, bites and envenoming, acid attacks, chemical incidents, radiation and electrical injury
• 26 SBA questions — two per topic, with answers and explanations
• 13 worked UK cases — each with a senior's reasoning
• 98 must-remember numbers — the thresholds, doses and timings that change what you do

Every topic follows the same structure

• Know it — the big idea, first actions, the Top 10, recognition and investigation
• Treat it — management, disposition, special groups and drug doses
• Numbers and evidence — key numbers, the evidence that matters, one live controversy and the exam traps
• Apply it — a worked case, shop-floor pitfalls, then two SBAs

Whose guidance is it?

Environmental medicine is short on trials and long on expert consensus — and UK and international bodies don't always agree. Every claim is colour-coded by source, so you can see at a glance whether you're reading UK national guidance, international guidance or a primary study. Where they differ, the book follows the most recent, most specific UK source and names the alternative.

Checked against cited primary sources, October 2026. Version 1.1. Corrected editions are issued free to existing buyers.

58-page PDF. For qualified healthcare professionals. Educational resource only — not a substitute for local protocols, TOXBASE, the BNF or clinical judgement.