title: Pediatric emergency medical services and their drawbacks.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To survey the literature on Pediatric Emergency Medical Services (PEMS) with an aim to focus its drawbacks and emphasize the means of improvement.
  
  
  METHODS
  Published articles selected for inclusion were based on the significance and understanding of literature search on different aspects of PEMS. To meet this criterion, PubMed, PubMed Central, Science Direct, Uptodate, Med Line, comprehensive databases, Cochrane library and the Internet (Google, Yahoo) were thoroughly searched.
  
  
  RESULTS
  PEMS provide out-of-hospital medical care and/or transport the patients to definitive care. The task force represents specialties of ambulance transport, first aid, emergency medical care, life saving, trauma, emergency medicine, water rescue, and extrication. Preliminary care is undertaken to save the patients from different medical exigencies. The techniques and procedures of basic and advanced life-support are employed. A large number of weaknesses are recorded in PEMS system, such as ambulance transport irregularities, deficit equipment, lack of expertise, and ignorance of the pre-hospital care providers. These are discussed with special reference to a few examples of medical exigencies.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The appointments in PEMS should be regularized with specific qualifications, experience, and expertise in different areas. Responsibility of PEMS should not be left to pre-hospital care providers, who are non clinicians and lack proper education and training. Pediatricians should be adequately trained to play an active role in PEMS. Meetings should be convened to discuss the lapses and means of improvement. Networks of co-operation between pre-hospital providers and experts in the emergency department should be established.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatric Emergency, King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
authors.forename: Abdullah Foraih
authors.initials: AF
authors.lastname: Al-Anazi