Introduction Like other components of health care in Canada, the responsibility for ensuring the delivery of appropriate effective prehospital care rests with the provincial authorities. Most provinces have established either a branch of the ministry of health or an emergency health services commission with responsibility for prehospital care. The Canadian Paediatric Society, the Trauma Association of Canada and the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians are concerned that specific paediatric equipment standards should be developed and implemented in each province.
Many services continue to improvise and use adult equipment when transporting children.
The response of equipment suppliers allows a much more appropriate selection of equipment for the care of critically ill and injured children in the prehospital setting. There are tremendous regional and provincial variations across Canada in prehospital care. In part this is due to demographic and geographic factors. The equipment needs of an ambulance service in rural and remote areas with low call volumes and prolonged response and transport times is substantially different from those of a service in a densely populated urban area. The level of training also varies significantly across the country, even between urban communities of comparable size.