Posted on 09/30/2020 9:54:05 AM PDT by BenLurkin
ambulance chasing lawyers will get them too
Agreed. Only in the most contrived of scenarios can you come up with something a jet pack paramedic could do that a "regular" paramedic and helicopter crew couldn't do.
As a plus, the helicopter option also means a basket and the ability to extract the vicim(s). As another plus, when not in use for paramedic / rescue missions there are a number of other reasonable things a helicopter could be used for. To me the jet pack looks like a toy looking for an excuse to exist - other than it is obviously a heck of a lot of fun to fly around with.
Mark
KMG 365.
That cartoon is way after my time.
Keep in mind that the idea of a paramedic is to stabilize trauma and provide very high level first aid. The writer implied that the pack is more a search and rescue device. Instead imagine you fall on a trail 5 miles from a crossing. Your leg is broken with an open fracture and the bone protruding, or maybe you had a heart attack. Your hiking partners are competent in wilderness First aid but you need more than they can offer.
One partner takes note of your injuries and runs the five miles to the trailhead and is able to make a call from there. (Remote trails often don’t have coverage)
The search and rescue team arrives and you are able to give them an approximate location. A paramedic straps up on the jet pack and is able to travel the five miles in 10 minutes while the rest of the extraction team gears up with a stretcher and other gear and begins to hike. At 3 miles an hour, it takes 90 minutes for the hiking partner to get to the trailhead, 30 minutes for search team to arrive, 75 minutes to hike to the accident site then treatment may begin.
With a jetpack, the response time is cut by at least 70 minutes. The paramedic stabilizes you and you’re ready for the 90 minute stretcher ride out courtesy of the SAR team.
This makes perfect sense to me.
FYI, I’m a backpacker and Wilderness First Aid certified.
You’re able to get a call out
I figured it’d be something like that. But I just couldn’t get the idea out of my head of an increasing number of stranded victims and recue workers piling up on some remote mountaintop where a helicopter can’t land.
Murphy’s Law.
The jet pack only makes sense if the cost of the jet pack is much much lower than the cost of a helicopter, enough lower that they could be widely deployed.
What would make MORE sense, though, would be quad-copter drones. Cheap, able to search wide areas and provide video back to base. Add some robotic arms and a first aid kit, and they could perform first aid without needing a human.
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