OBJECTIVES The objective of this regional study across Wales was to perform a preliminary examination of Welsh emergency vehicles to determine levels of bacterial contamination. METHODS Specific sites within emergency vehicles were swabbed, before and after vehicle cleaning, over a 12 month period, on a monthly basis. All swabs were sent to pathology laboratories for culturing and analysis. ...

man's own comrades?untrained men in all instances; and the practices were open to the gravest objections. The measure to ensure this humane and early relief now more or less introduced into all civilized armies is the formation of an Army Hospital Corps. The modern principle for the medical service of an army in the field is to separate the sick and wounded from the moving force, and to isolate...

Introduction The last six years of India’s National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) has witnessed the emergence of a wide variety of public funded, privately managed ambulance services across the states. Today there are over 3850 government financed emergency response ambulances and another 3000 are just about to start up, whereas just five years ago there were almost none. States have chosen diffe...

Pre-hospital coronary care was introduced at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast, on I January, 1966. The 20th Anniversary of this event was marked by a Festschrift in honour of the originator of this revolutionary approach, Professor Frank Pantridge. The proceedings of this international symposium were later published by Dr John S. Geddes under the title of "The Management of the Acute Corona...

All medical practitioners working within the NHS are subject to annual appraisal and in the future revalidation. Medical responders acting on behalf of NHS Ambulances Trusts often working in a voluntary capacity will require appraisal either individually (those working exclusively in prehospital care) or jointly (for hospital practitioners or GP's who are also involved prehospital care). They w...

BACKGROUND Within the UK, patients place a fairly high value on the out-of-hours GP home visiting service. Although satisfaction with the range of out-of-hours services has been found to be high, little is known about patients' specific experiences of the home visiting services. OBJECTIVE To investigate the satisfaction with, and experiences of, patients receiving a GP out-of-hours (OOH) home...

BACKGROUND Clinical placement is an essential element of paramedicine education and training as the profession completes the transition from vocational training to a pre-employment, university based model. The objective of this study was to survey pre-employment paramedicine students at Universities in Victoria, Australia and Auckland, New Zealand to measure their self-assessed preparedness for...

Background: A strong and effective emergency referral transport network is a prerequisite for country's assured ecosystem. Ambulances have grown exponentially since the start of National Ambulance Services under Health Mission (NHM) decade ago. This paper aims to understand systems, strategies progress undertaken by Government India upgrade strengthen system. Methods: We conducted narrative rev...

The use of a helicopter as a primary response vehicle for the Cornwall Ambulance Service is presented. A brief analysis of the activities of the First Air Ambulance is described and an appraisal of its effects on the overall performance of the Service is given. Emphasis is given to patient acceptability and also to the flexibility of the helicopter in terms of its response to different situatio...