In article ,
JTM writes:
ALSO: First Response Unit. Volunteer civilians trained to a local standard
(skill level varies throughout the country) A retired dep head teacher
friend of mine has twice attended calls to the local hospital as the
non-emergency doctors had no first aid training.

When I was at University in early 1980's, several of the London teaching
hospitals newly instigated a program where the first thing new medics
do is an emergency first-aid course, and it was open to anyone else
who wanted to come along too (which I did).

The reason for this was when someone is injured, often I cry went out
for a medic (and there were lots of undergrad medics around). However,
medics were not trained in emergency first aid at any point during
their courses, and were mostly not very useful at an accident scene.
The course was an attempt to overcome this, at least whilst the medics
were going through university.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]