Yes the 10, 1, 2 rule that is pretty standard now across nato nation and as adhered to as much as is practical. I lead To believe there is core competencies that define what each role is and that specialists can be added to each role hospital. There isn’t a huge difference between role 2 enhanced and role 3 in the uk other than size I’m lead to believe again could be wrong. What qe has is a role 2 basic which can be augmented with surgical specialists to become role 2 enhanced.Aethulwulf wrote:The size of the facility (number of beds) is not the real issue. Patients are no longer expected to recover and recuperate in theatre; they will be returned to the UK. It is not the size, but the speed; the throughput of patients that can be managed. In addition, it is the size and skills of the medical team.SW1 wrote:I maybe misunderstood but I could of sore this is what I said, get on helicopter, stabilise at bastion get on a plane to Birmingham as quickly as possible.Aethulwulf wrote:A full Role 3 field hospital was set up in Bastion. It had world class trauma and surgical facilities, including CT scanner and clinical labs. The intention was that any serious casualty (T1) would be picked up by the MERT and be receiving life saving surgery at Bastion in less than 1 hr. Once the patient was sufficiently stabilised (typically in 24 to 48 hrs), they would be flown back to Birmingham for longer term care. They were incredibly good. I can't remember the exact number, but something like >97% of patients entering the hospital alive made it back to the UK alive.
I thought the bastion facility while uk lead was only the size it was because of the addition of danish Estonian and American medical staff. Is the UKs future medical capability not based around the 50 bed hospital supplied by Marshall’s Aerospace. I still don’t see why this needs a single ship assigned to the task and couldn’t be for example on all the tide ships much like the Norwegians have done.
For a role 2 facility (such as on QEC and other ships such as the Tides), when a medical team is on board it will be based around a small number of general surgeons. It can perform basic life saving surgery and the medical team is around 50 people.
For a role 3 facility (such as Argus), the medical team is about 200 people. As well general surgeons, they will probably have consultants in emergency medicine, orthopaedic surgeons, plastic surgeons, clinical labs, CT, etc.
A number of types of ship could host a R3 facility but, in addition to the actual hospital, kit and beds, there are some key system objectives for such ships:
•accommodation space for medical team
•2 spot flight deck or bigger
•ability to offload stretcher patients from boats while keeping stretcher horizontal (e.g. well dock or similar)
•when alongside, ability to offload stretcher patients from ambulances while keeping stretcher horizontal (e.g. loading ramp. If you took stretcher patients on board using a standard ship's brow, quite a few would be dead by the time you got to the top. )
In terms of the role 3 at Bastion, they did not just "stabilise and get on a plane to Birmingham". They cured/corrected/resolved the primary issues at Bastion, and then transfered patients back to the UK for their longer term recovery.
The french have there facilities spread across there 3 mistral classes and Americans have significant capability across there amphibious vessels but operate several levels above what we have in size.
Defence medical is understaffed and maybe challenging for us to have a full role 3 capability with only uk personnel somethig already highlighted by the bma. But we could command one.
I see absolutely no reason why you would want to have this in a single ship it seems completely illogical you’d want as many ships as possible to accept this capability. It requires about 800m3 off space to utilise it and would seem to fit natural to the extremely large tide/FSS as others have already done that, rather than to procure a ship solely for that purpose as what happens when your 1 ship
Is in dry dock