¶ … 1966, the Committee on Trauma and Committee on Shock, the Division of Medical Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Research Council collaborated on a seminal report on accidental injury. The report covers everything from ambulance services to research on shock and trauma. Therefore, the report, entitled Accidental Death and Disability provides thorough groundwork for the emergency medical services professions and the educational systems that support those professions.
One of the express goals of the report was to raise awareness about the public health concerns associated with accidental emergency and death. As of 1965, the year prior to the report's publication, 52 million accidental injuries killed 107,000 people, permanently disabled 400,000 people, and temporarily disabled 107,000 people in the United States (Committee on Trauma and Committee on Shock, Division of Medical Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, & National Research Council, 1966, p. 5). Those numbers have since risen to 130,557 deaths, ranking accidental injury the fourth leading cause of death in America (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2014). The implications of these statistics are tremendous. Emergency medical services have improved since the 1966 report, and yet revisiting this pivotal publication calls attention...
When the report was issued, few personnel were adequately trained at all in lifesaving measures, whereas currently such training is commonplace (Committee on Trauma and Committee on Shock, Division of Medical Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, & National Research Council, 1966, p. 5). In fact, the report has been attributed as the "birth of EMS" itself (Edgerly, 2013). The most notable change that the report did make was to underscore the importance of preventative measures in EMS education and training. Preventative measures apply to firefighters, police, and any other potential first responder. A second way the report transformed the nature of emergency responsiveness was to standardize training, and a third was essentially the creation of an independent profession. Finally, the report showed that it was clearly not only possible but necessary to treat the victims immediately after an accident, at the site of the accident, or at an out-of-hospital location in order to provide the timely interventions that can mean the difference between life and death.
As Edgerly (2013) also points out, the 1966 report led to a series of sweeping revolutions…
