The Immediate Care of Seriously Ill and Injured Patients

It was at tho multidiscipline seminar on the management of road traffic casualties, organized by the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 1969, that the ambulance officers emerged as the group with the dominant knowledge of the immediate care of the road accident victim, by virtue of papers given by Berry and Toyne (1970). This was followed by the admiration of the audience for the standard of ambulance services throughout Australia. These opinions were givon by surgeons and others who had considerable experience of ambulance services in other countries where, by and large, the ambulances are manned by people who are very little more than glorified taxi drivers with first aid certificates and are often firemen, or even undertakers, rostered for this work.