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Accident The Accident section is organised through a Headquarters Superintendent and
Section 20 accident ambulance stations, each in charge of a station officer, and undertakes the
conveyance of (a) persons suffering from accidental injury (wherever occurring),
sudden illness in the streets, public places or places of employment, (b) cases of serious
illness at home (provided that a doctor certifies that the case is of top priority), (c) urgent
mental cases, (d) maternity cases (e) analgesia apparatus for use by domiciliary midwives
and (f) mobile obstetric units.
In 1958 an average of 272 calls a day for these emergency services were received
in the Headquarters control room and 69 per cent. of these calls were made by members
of the public.
Upon receipt of an emergency call, the necessary instructions are passed immediately
by direct telephone line from the control room to the nearest accident ambulance
station at which an ambulance and crew are available. These ambulance stations are so
situated that no station is more than about two miles from the scene of an emergency
and the average time taken for an ambulance to reach the scene of an emergency call
in 1958 was 6.5 minutes.
Peak demand periods tend to follow a definite pattern. 1958 conformed to type
with Friday as the busiest day of the week, averaging about 300 calls, and December
as the busiest month.
At Christmas and New Year and on other special occasions the Accident section is
augmented to meet the anticipated increase in emergency calls and during the period
from 2 p.m. on Christmas Eve 1958 to 2 a.m. on Christmas morning, no less than
411 emergency calls were received, i.e. an average of one call every 105 seconds.
Table (ii) shows an analysis of the various categories of emergency calls received in
1958 and indicates that the highest incidence of such calls was from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
and from 10 p.m. to midnight. The most dangerous periods for street accidents were
between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. and for home accidents between the hours of 11 a.m. and
3 p.m.
Calls for the removal of maternity cases constitute the greatest single category of
emergency demand but the pressure which these calls would otherwise put upon the
resources of the Accident section is to some extent offset by the fact that the majority
of them occur at night. 27,248 calls were received in 1958, amounting to 26-5 per cent
of the total emergency calls. In 198 cases the babies were born before the arrival of
the ambulance, 120 babies were born after the arrival of the ambulance but before the
doctor or midwife could be summoned, 42 were born in the ambulance on the way to
hospital without the assistance of a midwife and 18 on the way to hospital with the
assistance of a midwife.
In spite of the increasing volume of emergency work and the increased traffic
congestion there has been a steady improvement in the times taken to reach the scene
of an emergency and to reach hospital. The average time of arrival has been reduced
from 8.1 minutes in 1948 to 6.5 minutes in 1958 and the average time taken to reach
hospital from 21.7 minutes to 20.3 minutes, these times intervals being calculated from
the time of receipt of the original call.
The average of the times taken to reach the scenes of street accidents, to which there
were 16,690 calls, involving 19,182 patients in 1958, was six minutes and the casualties
were admitted to one or other of 61 hospitals in the county, which are prepared to
admit casualties at any time of the day or night, within an average of 17-8 minutes from
the time the initial call for assistance was received.
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