Pre-hospital emergency medicine (abbreviated PHEM), also referred to as pre-hospital care, immediate care, or emergency medical services medicine (abbreviated EMS medicine), is a medical subspecialty which focuses on caring for seriously ill or injured patients before they reach hospital, and during emergency transfer to hospital or between hospitals. It may be practised by physicians from various backgrounds such as anaesthesiology, emergency medicine, intensive care medicine and acute medicine, after they have completed initial training in their base specialty. Doctors practising PHEM are usually well-integrated with local emergency medical services, and are dispatched together with emergency medical technicians or paramedics where potentially life-threatening trauma or illness is suspected that may benefit from immediate specialist medical treatment.This may involve travelling by car or air ambulance to the site.