Cases in Pre-Hospital and Retrieval Medicine

Authors

• Daniel Ellis: MBBS, FIMC RCSEd, FCEM, FACEM, FRCS, MRCP, MRCA, DMCC, EDIC
• Matthew Hooper: MBBS, DipIMC, RCSEd, FACEM, FJFICM

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Section A- Pre-hospital theme
• Section B- Retrieval Theme
• Section C- Service development and special circumstances
• Appendices

Book Review

Cases in Pre-hospital and Retrieval Medicine is written by two experienced retrieval physicians based here in Australia and in the UK, with subspecialty training in emergency and intensive care medicine.  This short book covers a large range of cases that clinicians could encounter in the pre-hospital environment. It has been broken up into three main sections that cover pre-hospital theme, retrieval theme, and service developments and special circumstances, the appendices covers common procedures and equipment list.

This book fills a gap that has been missing for doctors, nurses and paramedics who practice in the pre-hospital environment by providing them with a concise, easy to read and follow book, that can be used to guide their practice on a daily basis.  The book has excellent full colour pictures with nearly every case study, which helps to give the reader get a full understanding off the case.  The book covers cases from paediatrics, trauma, toxicology, inter-hospital transfer, neurology,neurosurgery, cardiology, respiratory and so many more. It go’s into depth on the preparation and stabilization of the patient prior to transfer, and also covers some difficult ethical issues.

It’s very hard to find a downfall of this text, however some cases and concepts in the book are covered very briefly and could have gone into more detail. For example managing the ventilated patient and cabin pressure, was only covered briefly and the laws of physic surrounding this were also discussed very briefly. I felt this was a pertinent topic that could have benefited from more in depth evaluation.

I recommend this book as a must read book for any clinician’s that are involved or interested in pre-hospital or retrieval medicine. This book will also be of benefit to staff working in rural and remote hospitals that use a retrieval service as they can understand what is required for preparing a patient for areomedical transfer.