An ambulance is a vehicle for transporting sick or injured
people,[1] to, from or
between places of treatment for an illness or injury.
The term ambulance is used to describe a vehicle used to bring medical
care to patients outside of the hospital or to transport the patient to
hospital for follow-up care and further testing. The word is most commonly
associated with the land-based, emergency motor
vehicles that administer emergency
care to those with acute illnesses or injuries, hereafter known
as emergency ambulances. These are usually fitted with flashing warning lights and sirens to
facilitate their movement through traffic. It is these emergency ambulances
that are most likely to display the Star of Life,[2] which
represents the six stages of prehospital medical care. Other vehicles used
as ambulances include trucks, vans, station wagons, buses, helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, boats, and even hospital ships.
The term ambulance comes from the Latin word ambulare,
meaning to walk or move about[3] which is a
reference to early medical care where patients were moved by
lifting or wheeling. The word originally meant a moving hospital which
follows an army in its movements.[4] During the American Civil War vehicles for conveying the
wounded off the field of battle were called ambulance wagons.[5] Field hospitals were still called ambulances
during the Franco-Prussian
War[6] of 1870 and
in the Serbo-Turkish war of 1876[7] even though
the wagons were first referred to as ambulances about 1854 during the Crimean
War.[8]
There are other types of ambulance, with the most common being the
patient transport ambulance. These vehicles are not usually
(although there are exceptions) equipped with life-support equipment, and
are usually crewed by staff with fewer qualifications than the crew of emergency ambulances. Their purpose is simply to
transport patients to, from or between places of treatment. In most
countries, these are not equipped with flashing lights or sirens. In some
jurisdictions there is a modified form of the ambulance used, that only
carries one member of ambulance crew to the scene to provide care, but is
not used to transport the patient.[9] In these
cases a patient who requires transportation to hospital will require a
patient-carrying ambulance to attend in addition to the fast
responder