PREHOSPITAL CARE

Debate

For Debate...: A license to practise pre-hospital and retrieval medicine

R Mackenzie¹, D Bevan²

¹ Consultant in Accident and Emergency Medicine and Medical Director, MAGPAS, St Ives, Cambridgshire, UK
² General Practitioner and Immediate Care Doctor MAGPAS, St Ives, Cambridgeshire, UK

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr R Mackenzie
Mid Anglia General Practitioner Accident Service (MAGPAS), St Ives, Cambridgeshire PE27 5WF UK; roderick.mackenzie@magpas.org.uk

Accepted 30 December 2004

Abbreviations: A&E, accident and emergency; BASICS, British Association for Immediate Care; CCT, Certificate of Completion of Training; DoH, Department of Health; GP, general practitioner; GPwSI, General Practitioner with Specialist Interest (GPwSI); JCPTGP, Joint Committee on Postgraduate Training in General Practice; PHEC, Pre-hospital Emergency Care; PMETB, Postgraduate Medical Education and Training Board; STA, Specialist Training Authority

Keywords: ambulance service; BASICS; competence; immediate care; pre-hospital care

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The provision of on scene medical support to ambulance services in the UK is fragmented, disorganised, and largely unregulated. Recent and evolving educational, professional, and regulatory developments in medical practice now provide an opportunity to remedy this situation and ensure that "immediate care" is governed and regulated in the same way as any other specialist undertaking within the NHS.

Immediate care has been defined as the provision of skilled medical help at the scene of an accident or medical emergency and during transportation to hospital.¹ Well before the development of modern ambulance services and the recognition of accident and emergency (A&E) medicine as a specialty, general practitioners (GPs) were required to deal with increasing numbers of critically injured patients in the pre-hospital environment. Their response, in most parts of the UK, was to form themselves into voluntary associations and create a framework within which their training, equipment, and operational . . . [Full text of this article]

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Relevant Article

Primary survey

Colville Laird
Emerg. Med. J. 2005 22: 235. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Mackenzie, R, Steel, A, French, J, Wharton, R, Lewis, S, Bates, A, Daniels, T, Rosenfeld, M (2009). Views regarding the provision of prehospital critical care in the UK. Emerg. Med. J. 26: 365-370 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Mackenzie, R. (2007). Prehospital and retrieval medicine. Emerg. Med. J. 24: 450-450 [Full Text]  
• Donald, M, Paterson, B (2007). Introduction of an electronic debrief and governance tool in prehospital care. Emerg. Med. J. 24: 363-366 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Dissmann, P D, Le Clerc, S (2007). The experience of Teesside helicopter emergency services: doctors do not prolong prehospital on-scene times. Emerg. Med. J. 24: 59-62 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Shirley, P J, Hearns, S (2006). Retrieval medicine: a review and guide for UK practitioners. Part 1: Clinical guidelines and evidence base. Emerg. Med. J. 23: 937-942 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Lockey, D., Deakin, C. D (2005). Pre-hospital trauma care: systems and delivery. Contin Educ Anaesth Crit Care Pain 5: 191-194 [Full Text]  
• Clements, R, Mackenzie, R (2005). Competence in prehospital care: evolving concepts. Emerg. Med. J. 22: 516-519 [Abstract] [Full Text]