Background: Emergency departments provide continuous 24 - h health services. The working shifts required for health workers to provide high - quality and continuous services are still the subject of debate. This descriptive study compares the emergency department working shifts in Turkey with the emergency department working shifts in Iran. Methods: This cross sectional descriptive study assesses numbers of paramedics, nurse, resident physicians, specialist physicians, faculty members, shift hours, numbers of patient admission per day, and compares the shift systems worked by emergency department staff in three hospitals providingmedical training in Turkey and emergency department staff from amedical faculty providing training in Iran. Results: The highest numbers of residents (N = 50) and members of teaching staff (N = 14) were observed in Tabriz - Iran Imam Reza Hospital. Resident physicians at Turkey’s Karadeniz technical University (KTU) Medical Faculty Emergency Department work 24 - h block shifts, while those in other centers work various shift patterns. The teaching staff at the Imam Reza Hospital work actively for 24 h, while those in hospitals in Turkey work actively in the daytime and are on standby in the evening. The Emergency Severity Index triage system is applied in the Imam Reza Hospital, while the three centers in Turkey use the yellow, red, and green triage coding system. Conclusions: Presentation of teaching a faculty member in 24 hours in shifts and using ESI triage system with divided shift times in a day can improve emergency management by decreasing personnel burnout and increasing care satisfaction in patients.