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1. Read and translate the text.
A&E
Every day, through the doors of A&E departments, come the vic-
tims of road traffic accidents, violent crimes, accidents at home, sui-
cide attempts, self-harming, contact with toxic chemicals and radia-
tion, burns, near drowning, hypothermia, and so on. A&E departments
also fill up with people who should not really be there – people with
minor injuries like sprains, cuts, and grazes. So when is an accident an
emergency? A&E staff normally consider an emergency to involve
one or more of the following:
* loss of consciousness
* heavy blood loss
* suspected broken bones
* chest pain lasting fifteen minutes or more
* difficulty breathing
* overdose or poisoning
An Accident and Emergency department is sometimes called
Casualty. It’s where patients are taken by ambulances in response to
emergency calls at any time – day or night. On arrival in A&E, pa-
tients are immediately assessed. This assessment is called triage, a
word that comes from the French trier meaning “to sort”.
A&E triage normally assesses patients according to how urgently
they need treatment, their age, and whether their condition will worsen
if they are not treated immediately. This means that A&E patients are
not necessarily seen on a first come, first served basis. In some emer-
gency situations, where there are many casualties and resources are
thinly spread, the wounded may be assessed according to their chanc-
es of surviving rather than their chances of dying.
People often use A&E wrongly It is not an alternative to an ap-
pointment with a local doctor and it is not for things like bruises and
cuts that can be dealt with in minor injuries units. However, if there is
a genuine emergency, patients will receive initial treatment in A&E
and then be admitted to hospital for further treatment and tests.
An emergency situation is not always easy to define, but most
A&E departments would agree on the following criteria. An emergen-
cy is when a patient