Accident and Emergency Response Team Alpha, The Grosvenor Hospital, England.

Members:

Team Leader: Doctor John Samuels
Cardiac Specialist: Doctor Clive Previte-Orton
Field Medic: Doctor Frank Martin
Field Medic: Doctor Janice Gleick

Modus Operandi:

The AERTs Main role is to safeguard any person involved in a medical emergency. To do this they need to be able to respond to a crisis extremely quickly. To this end the team utilises a Jumper (Upeo Wa Macho) to travel to and from emergencies. This can prove problematic if the place is unfamiliar to the Jumper but a group of two ISRAn seers, who remain at the hospital to service all the AERTs, act as early warning and accident spotter devices. Once at the emergency the teams are required to look at each situation and determine the possible hazards and need for extraction. If extraction is required the Jumper is utilised to move the patient without actually touching them, invaluable in some cases of burns or multiple fracture. If no extraction is required the team will simply use either conventional medicine or their psionic talents to heal the injured person(s).

History:

During the early part of the 21st century the National Health Service of the United Kingdom was buckling under the strain placed upon it by a fast rising population and the lack of money put into the Service for research, new staff and better facilities. The answer to the politicians of the day was to put the Health Service up for sale as part of a joint public/private partnership. Companies jumped at the chance to own the hospitals and the money the government gained ensured the short term success of the scheme.

The problems that emerged however destroyed the notion that the system was flawless and facile. People were now forced to pay for their own medical care something hadn't been done for nearly a century in the UK, many people were unable to pay and were forced to use the under funded and therefore less desirable free clinics. Due to the size of the NHS it had severe management problems, and the NHS had to be broken down into several smaller divisions, based on county lines, to keep the hospitals running and effective. This again solved the short term management difficulties but failed the poorest in society, as the free clinics were not widespread. Other difficulties arose due to the problem of registration. Due to the different county divisions people had to be taken to their own hospital, even in emergency cases as they were paying insurance in their own county, individual passes and insurance notes had to be produced to 'foreign' county hospitals for treatment or the hospital would turn people away, for fear of not being paid.

The situation continued like this for several years until, in a shock move Manchester County councils bought a hospital for the use of everyone in the county. Due to the large size of Manchester vast sums of money were being collected by the councils and hoarded for future use, a visionary humanitarian, Lyle Grosvenor, had recently been elected mayor and the first act of his tenure was to free this money for the purchase of the Hospital which now bears his name.

The Hospital has had great success in treating all patients that came through its doors and the increased revenue it got from the insurance scheme helped pay for one of the leading medical teams in Europe.

Since the emergence of Psions, especially Aesculapians, the Hospital has tried it's hardest to recruit as many fine Rex's as possible. Due to the more open nature of the Hospital the recruitment has been going very well with exceptionally talented Aesculapians joining the staff.

The Accident and Emergency Response Team (AERT) plays a two-fold role at The Grosvenor. Firstly it act as the first port of call after any admittance to A+E. Secondly if the accident is large enough to warrant an outside team, one of the teams (currently there are three AERTs in the hospital) will go directly to the scene of the accident/emergency.

Team Alpha is the smallest of the three AERTs but is also the most highly regarded. Led by Dr John Samuels, a fine Psion and a brilliant Medical Doctor before his latency test, the troupe are currently working on integrating new bioware into neutral medical use (ie non-psion). Obviously this takes second place to any emergency work, but has produced some surprisingly innovative bioware.

Group Dynamic:

Team Alpha would seem to be the perfect Aesculapian working partnership. Nothing could be further from the truth. The only thing keeping these psions from tearing into each other is their individual professionalism. The main antagonism is between Dr Samuels and Dr Previte-Orton.

Born in the same small town of Hove they were both educated at Basel, only two years apart, and became top of their respective classes. A rivalry developed due to the constant media association and the positions they had applied for in the medical profession. Across the board they had applied for exactly the same jobs and when the two were selected to work side by side at Grosvenor Hospital the pair jumped at the chance to indulge in some friendly rivalry. When it became clear that it was not the case, that they would not be on equal footing, and, in fact, Samuels would be Previte-Orton's immediate senior sparks flew. At least in private.

The two young Rex's assigned to Team Alpha spend more time pacifying the two doctors so they are rarely doing anything else, but both remain firmly neutral. It is only a matter of time before the two senior Doctors are at each other's throats in public. Neither will resign, each assuming that the other will and neither will ask to be reassigned as it would be seen as an admission of failure to the other Doctor.