Mabel, You are not being dense, TLA's are the bain of our lives - BTW that is 3 letter acronyms. I will translate: V numbers were the hospital numbers in the disaster plan pre-prepared case notes, these had been introduced following a serious train crash in the 1970's - and were never updated, they sat in the cupboard waiting to be used. As they were created before we had computerised hospital information systems we found in the middle of the mayhem everyone's IT systems and the centralised hospital system could not recognise these numbers. For pathology and radiography it meant results were not "on-line" and they had to be hand delivered on paper. PAS = Patient administration system, the hospitals computerised patient's records - often called HIS hospital information systems or EPR electronic patient records. HCT = Hospital Control Team (sometimes called Gold Control in incident plans) HIC = Hospital Information Centre Tabards = a type of apron which labels who each member of the trauma team is - often these are also lead lined as a protection from the mobile x-ray units used in the trauma room PALS = patient advisory and liason service MIP = Major incident plan Bleep system = pagers LAS = London Ambulance Service Hope this helps ans sorry I should really of added a glossary. Colin