A new faculty and journal are encouraging research and better services

Many of the people who die of trauma, heart attacks, or stroke die within the first hour. Many do not reach hospital. People have thus long recognised the need to improve the emergency services offered to patients before they reach hospital. But research on what happens at that critical time is hard to do. Many questions remain about who should offer the care and how it can best be offered. In an attempt to encourage research into prehospital emergency care and to develop the services offered, the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh has established a multidisciplinary faculty of prehospital care. Now BASICS (British Association for Immediate Care) and the BMJ Publishing Group are launching a new journal—Pre-hospital Emergency Care Journal.*

BASICS was begun by Ken Easton in 1966 after he had seen serious road accidents poorly managed. It now comprises 1700 doctors around Britain, most of them general practitioners, who …