© 2004 BMJ Publishing Group Ltd, British Association for Accident & Emergency Medicine, & Faculty of Accident & Emergency Medicine
COMMENTARY
War
Personal view: a day in the life of an emergency physician at war
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Colonel T J Hodgetts
Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, K Block, Selly Oak Hospital, Birmingham B29 6JD, UK; timothy.hodgetts@uhb.nhs.uk
The reality of emergency medicine in the war arena
Keywords: war; conflict
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
I would not regard myself as superstitious, but 13 April 2003 was not what I would call a lucky day. It was the 22nd day of the ground war in Iraq and I was the officer in command of the emergency department of 34 Field Hospital. Seventeen days previously this had moved into Iraq in support of the 1st (UK) Armoured Division and had begun treating battle casualties on 27 March. Unusually the hospital was co-located far forward with the infantry and armour units on a disused military airfield close to the city of Al Basrah. By this time in the war the explosions around the perimeter had become less frequent, and the hostile incoming mortar and artillery fire had stopped. Challenger II tanks of the Scots Dragoon Guards and 2 Royal Tank Regiment could no longer be seen racing across the desert and engaging targets; and the nightly
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