Talk:Emergency medical services in the United Kingdom

Remodelling of this and Service pages?
Looking at this page and it’s child pages for individual services, it’s evident the topic could do with a remodelling to remove duplicate information replicated on all pages, to standardise/templateise service pages, and to refresh information on service information and national provision. Wondering if anyone has any thoughts on this or wish to join me in this?

tedjam (talk) 02:10, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Americanism?
Surely Emergency Medical Services is an American term, not a UK term. Every service in the UK is an Ambulance Service or NHS Ambulance Trust. None are Emergency Medical Service so why is the Americanism used? --jmb 19:57, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Emergency medical service is used in this context as a universal term, not least because it is descriptive (medical service used in an emergency) but not every ambulance is an 'emergency' ambulance. Employees of each UK ambulance service are still likely to be 'Emergency Medical Technicians'.  It might have been wrong to use it in capitals (Emergency Medical Services) as that gives the acronym the US use quite frequently, but you do see it used in the UK occasionally, and in either case it doesn't mean it's wrong for the UK setting.   Owain.davies 20:36, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

The Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust refers to its emergency service as the Emergency Medical Service, or EMS, so it is not accurate to say that this is simply an Americanism. (Zandeman (talk) 23:52, 25 April 2010 (UTC))

EMS in "international english" EMS includes Emergency Primary and Hospital Care and even NHS Responds.... this Article would better called UK Ambulance Service Ambulance! The UK public Service of Ambulances is not to be compared with the USA chaotic "EMS"  But one othe critics of a foreigner is  that is the tendency of demedicalization in the sense of non participation of Care Professionals and Paraprofessionals like in USA. Prehospital Ambulance care providers are evolving toward independent practice in UK. They may have limited contact with other health care providers and can develop more allegiance the other care givers. Also the AAEMSP believes that collaboration between emergency medical technicians and knowledgeable, committed physicians providing of medical control or regulation is essential for the provision of high-quality care based on sound, current scientific knowledge. Our belief, and that of others, is that abdication of or exclusion from this extrahospital ambulance role increases the risk of inappropriate, cost-ineffective and potentially dangerous prehospital ambulance care care. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.24.231.238 (talk) 15:48, 27 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm afraid i can't really understand your point. This talk page is for discussion of the article, not for the opinion of the subject. OwainDavies (about)(talk) edited at 20:41, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Logo scotamb.gif
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 * Fair use rationale now inserted on image by User:Scancoaches.  Owain.davies 16:57, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Big White Taxi Service
The suggestion for inclusion in this article is not appropriate. Although BWTS is a reference to the ambulance service, hardly fitting in the context of the rest of this article as a stand alone contribution. Keep the original wiki entry for Big White Taxi Service as it is. All the material that was questioned has been removed and it now adheres to the suggestions that were proposed by moderators with regards to references and links. —Preceding Littlebaron comment added by Littlebaron (talk • contribs) 19:41, 01 January 2008 (UTC)

I've tried to re-organise this article - much of the detail only applies to England, so I've tried to move such material under the England section - perhaps in future we can expand details for the other countries. Cheers Fishiehelper2 (talk) 11:07, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Split and rejoining of article
I only noticed today that someone had split this article into country sections a few months back. I have reversed this change, as I feel it is very much counter-productive to good encyclopaedic content, with all the resultant articles becoming stubby and lacking substantive information. It also made it more difficult to compare areas to each other. Despite what some people might tell you, the UK is still one country, and there are many similarities and shared resources between all of the UK ambulance services!

I feel that any move like this should have been discussed on talk first, so I have reverted it. I appreciate that a few minor fixes made on individual pages have been lost during this, and I will try to restore them soon.

Regards, OwainDavies (about)(talk) edited at 07:49, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

St Andrew's
Should there be a mention of the St. Andrew's Ambulance Association under Voluntary Ambulance Services? They no longer operate ambulances but historically they did do so in Scotland along with the Red Cross? --jmb (talk) 11:45, 15 February 2009 (UTC)


 * They were removed some time ago due to them no longer providing any EMS service. I don't think its necessarily encyclopaedic to include them, as a number of voluntary services have operated ambulances in the past, and you could just get drawn in to long lists of former operators.  It's definitely noteworthy on the St Andrews Ambulance page, but i would suggest not here. OwainDavies (about)(talk) edited at 14:54, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

the law
the link relating to an Ambulance Service's statutory duty to respond to the criteria mention in the article is defunct and relates to an NHS Direct page anyway. Could somebody please restore this or add a more appropriate link and consider mentiong the statute under which this duty is prescribed in the main article. It may also be worth mentioning the Ambulance Service's duty of care to its "customers" (or lack thereof and consider mentioning the negligence case of Kent v London Ambulance Service —Preceding unsigned comment added by HJ Mitchell (talk • contribs) 14:38, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Emergency medical personnel in the United Kingdom
It doesn't seem to make sense to separate the personnel from the services that they deliver. A single article would give a much better holistic view of emergency services in the United Kingdom. Biker Biker (talk) 09:03, 10 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Disagree, there are two distinct subjects here - the structure of provision, and qualification. But they could be better linked together. OwainDavies (about)(talk) edited at 20:40, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Agree. I think the content would be stronger if the nature of the services was presented side-by-side with the qualifications. An ambulance crew can consist of technicians and paramedics; it makes perfect sense to explain in that context what their remit/skillset is. If the article gets too bulky, it is always possible to split off individual services into subarticles. JFW &#124; T@lk  08:59, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Agree. Both articles should be moved into a new page, Emergency medicine in the United Kingdom. This would preserve the content of both articles but ensure that the information's displayed in one place, which is likely to improve its readership and quality. Opinions? (Ping!, , as you've previously commented). Kind regards, LT910001 (talk) 07:43, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I still don't see the benefit. Neither article is a stub - in fact they are reasonably lengthy.  I'm not sure what the benefit would be, apart from to make one unecessarily long article.  Improve the linking by all means, and maybe include a precis and  or  template as part of it - that all makes sense, but not getting the drive for a merge . OwainDavies (about)(talk) edited at 11:23, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Disagree, I think the emergency services are a very diverse collection of professionals and have quite varied arrangements across the county (and Emergency Medicine is a term used for a mainly a hospital-based specialty). The qualification route, for example, has seen a lot of change in recent years. I think more useful coverage of the topics can be achieved without a merge. Drchriswilliams (talk) 14:55, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified
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2022 emergency services healthcare crises/shortage/delays
Is there an actual, noted emergency services healthcare crises/shortage/delays in England, here in 2022?

Seems might be the collapse of emergency healthcare in England may be costing 500 lives every week, a close match for non-Covid excess deaths ... Let’s look at how we reach that conclusion, by taking a deep-dive into non-Covid excess mortality and its possible causes and the FT may have more.

But I have been unsuccessful finding the topic covered in Wikipedia. And the History section of this article is missing the phenonmenon, if it is actually notable and sourced. Cheers. N2e (talk) 00:51, 2 September 2022 (UTC)


 * "If you build it they will come" - be bold, start it, and I'm sure others will jump in to add more. 10mmsocket (talk) 07:59, 3 July 2023 (UTC)