摘要：Emergency ward medical personnel responds to patients with differentiated levels of attention. Patients’ capacities to mobilize attention vary and are expressed through an attributed hierarchical rank and level of priority : at the two extremes we find patients who are immediately cared for, and those who are left to wait indefinitely. What are the signs which elicit a high (or low) degree of mobilization by doctors, and which participate in (or prevent) appreciation of a particular health problem as an emergency ? Through this inquiry the author attempts to understand the biomedical conception of medical emergency, not as it is defined academically or in the normative discourse of doctors, but as it emerges through observable behavior manifested in situation.
