Worthy of your shelf space

For most readers, the term ‘major incident’ is likely to be associated with mandatory annual training or updates rather than a part of day-to-day life—unless of course you work in a Hazardous Area Response Team (HART) or the Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response (EPRR) department.

For most ambulance staff, it's not something we spend our days thinking about. A major incident is something no one wants but we are all expected and required to be prepared for. However, major incidents do, unfortunately, occur and when they happen, we are bound to respond in a professional and organised manner.

Many of us will have a bookshelf at home dedicated to our clinical texts and for subjects like ECGs, trauma, anatomy and physiology; we may well have a number of key books. Given the rarity of major incidents, how likely is it that we all keep a book devoted to this subject? And unless we were part of the aforementioned HART or EPRR staff, it is not likely that we would need more than one.