Q. What is pre-hospital care?
A. Pre-hospital care describes the phase of care administered to a patient before they reach hospital.
Q. Who is normally involved in pre-hospital care?
A. Ambulance services employ Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs), Paramedics and Emergency Care Practitioners (ECPs) to attend patients who call 999.
Q. Where do doctors fit in to pre-hospital care?
A. Most ambulance services have a small number of doctors who provide a voluntary on-call service to attend seriously injured patients or accident scenes involving multiple patients.
Q. Why are doctors needed?
A. Although ambulance personnel are highly trained, there remains some skills that can only be carried out by a doctor. Typically these include using potent drugs to provide pain relief and other special techniques to help stabilise severely injured patients.
Q. What's different about WYMRT?
A. Whilst most ambulance services rely on calling doctors from home, WYMRT proactively goes out on weekend nights to provide medical cover to the West Yorkshire region. Response times are rapid due to the fact that there is a doctor on duty in a specially adapted car, allowing them to reach patients quickly and safely.
