Tippett and co-authors are to be congratulated for an insightful and well written paper that addresses an important issue in prehospital care. Governments and emergency operations personnel often plan for future pandemics with a focus on distribution of " stuff " such as gloves, masks, beds, and ventilators. Inadequate attention is directed to healthcare provider staffing, including staffing of...

Chemical warfare agents are toxic weapons and emergency prehospital medical care providers should be well prepared, trained, and equipped to give response. Personnel need to be aware of the following medical issues regarding prehospital management of a chemical attack, event recognition, incident medical command and control, safety and protection, decontamination, isolation of the incident area...

Chemical warfare agents are toxic weapons and emergency prehospital medical care providers should be well prepared, trained, and equipped to give response. Personnel need to be aware of the following medical issues regarding prehospital management of a chemical attack, event recognition, incident medical command and control, safety and protection, decontamination, isolation of the incident area...

Orthopedic injuries are predominant among combat casualties, and carry the potential for significant morbidity. An expert consensus process (Prehospital care of military orthopedic trauma: A consensus meeting, Israel Defense Forces Medical Corps, May 2003) was used to create guidelines for the treatment of these injuries by military prehospital providers. The consensus treatment guidelines deve...

A quick and efficient prehospital emergency response depends on immediate ambulance dispatch, patient assessment, triage, and transport to hospital. During 1999, the Ambulance Command of the Hong Kong Fire Services Department responded to 484,923 calls, which corresponds to 1329 calls each day. Cooperation between the Fire Services Department and the Hospital Authority exists at the levels of p...

BACKGROUND Out-of-hospital maternity care in Norway is randomly organised and not properly formalized. We wished to examine the extent, organisation and quality of this service. MATERIAL AND METHOD We obtained information from the Norwegian Medical Birth Registry on all unplanned out-of-hospital births in 2008. A questionnaire was sent to all maternity institutions, municipalities and emergen...

The provision of safe and effective healthcare is a mainstay for all services clinicians associated with the delivery prehospital care; however, little empirically known about prevalence impact harm caused in phase. This commentary critically appraises recent systematic review which sought to identify frequency patient safety incidents them care.

INTRODUCTION Despite evidence from other healthcare settings that language barriers negatively impact patient outcomes, the literature on language barriers in emergency medical services (EMS) has not been previously summarized. The objective of this study is to systematically review existing studies of the impact of language barriers on prehospital emergency care and identify opportunities for ...