What is Toxicology?

I completed a 1 month rotation in clinical Toxicology. So what is toxicology? Like everything else in medicine it is a complicated question. A clinical toxicologist usually completes medical school and then completes a residency in emergency medicine (3-4 years) followed by a 2 year fellowship in toxicology.

A clinical toxicologist will usually work as an emergency medicine physician part time and then work as a consultant in toxicology where they get consulted on cases where a patient has overdosed or taken a poison (intentionally or accidentally). The toxicologist will come in and see the patient and make recommendations on how to treat the poisoned patient. These consultations usually come from emergency medicine doctors or the poison control.

The clinical toxicologist will also usually be professor tied to an academic teaching hospital and will spend some of their time teaching about various toxic exposures that occur to patients. Their job includes several different roles which makes it an interesting field.

As one toxicologist told me; "Everything in medicine is tox related"