Citation

Bennett SR. Surgery (Oxf) 2015; 33(9): 413-418.

Affiliation

National Guard Health City, King Faisal Center, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Conflicts of interest: none declared.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.mpsur.2015.07.005

PMID

32287819

PMCID

PMC7143673

Abstract

Major incidents during the past 30 years have caused the NHS and other agencies to respond in a coordinated fashion and create the comprehensive Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response framework 2013. This along with supporting documents gives a detailed structure of the role of the NHS in any type of major incident from man-made disaster to pandemic flu. This has required preparation of communication, transport, security, military and healthcare systems. Included is also how the response is handled at a more local level and for different levels of response. The Royal Colleges have responded by including specialist training at the higher and advanced level for trainees so that victims are triaged at the scene and received by consultants with appropriate training in such work. Hospitals, ambulance services and intensive care units across the country are able to use networks to ensure not only logical and rapid access to major trauma centres but also to network highly sophisticated skills when advanced life support is required. The NHS is better able to cope with major incidents than ever before.

Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Emergency medicine; incidents; intensive care unit; mass casualty