The Emergency Medicine Core Content represents the central body of knowledge of emergency medicine and is presented as an itemized list of clinical diseases, major clinical symptoms, administrative entities, and physician skills. It comprises the nucleus of the actual practice of clinical emergency medicine. Finally, it describes the educational scope of postgraduate training and continuing medical education in emergency medicine. The Core Content should be differentiated from a training curriculum. A training curriculum defines the experiential and educational means to attain this core body of knowledge. The Emergency Medicine Core Content was derived in part from the Committee on Board Establishment (COBE) conditions and skills list. Its present form represents a total reorganization of the COBE list with appropriate additions and deletions. All diseases and symptoms were included on the basis of four criteria: conditions which pose immediate life or limb threat; conditions which potentially require inhospital treatment; conditions which give rise to significant discomfort to the patient and conditions with medicolegal implications. The Emergency Medicine Core Content has been widely circulated and has input from numerous individuals and committees. All critiques were closely reviewed and employed to derive the final document as it now exists.