A CONFERENCE of this nature is most valuable in bringing together people who are interested and involved in the accident and emergency services, to discuss the problems and to look at possible solutions. Increasingly over the last few years it has become more difficult to staff accident and emergency departments. This situation has caused eminent bodies such as the Royal College of Physicians, ...

There is an increasing demand of multimedia and location aware services when an accurate and immediate response is needed, for example in the case of emergency services. In parallel, the technology has evolved from Circuit Switch (CS) to Packet Switch (PS) networks requiring backwards compatibility. As a result the emergency services support for NGNs, in particular for IMS, is being standardize...

Failing emergency medical services To the Editor: I refer to the scientific letter entitled ‘Emergency centres lack defibrillator knowledge’.1 I am a recently retired UK accident and emergency consultant who is now attempting to plough back knowledge gained in the discipline of emergency medicine (EM) and trauma to peripheral hospitals in the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) under the umbre...

Overall, our view of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) is too constrained and limits services that could be provided. Some time ago, a friend remarked that EMS was unrelated to Disaster Medicine and, in fact, advised that the World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine (WADEM) and this journal (PDM) needed to concentrate either on Disaster Medicine OR EMS. More recently, this same frie...

Background: The emergency medical services system has a vital role in the timely treatment of victims and the reduction of injury and mortality rates. Ambulance response time is an essential variable in evaluating the quality of its services. The aim of this study was to determine the ambulance response time and to compare it according to background variables. Methods: This descriptive study ...