The Flying Paramedic

[Foo Fighter]

Bail, no. Circular arguments rarely get anywhere. You have your opinion, good for you. We all have our points of view and here I am stuck in it for another round. Accept I'm not. Have a great week and enjoy your point of view, there are no winners here but, I was never interested in such a result. Opinion and debate are now both pointless. Stay well you and yours.

 

[Orionblamblam]

there are no winners

But... but... CNN called it!

 

[taildragger]

How do you get the patient in/on/under the drone? How do you get initial treatment to the patient to begin the stabilisation process? How do you replace lost circulating body fluids? How do you stabilise a fracture which could during movement cause massive bleeding trauma in and of itself? With the paramedic out of the equation you will in a lot of instances be delivering a body to the morgue, just a bit quicker is all.

The best thing for a patient is to fly an ER doctor out to the patient ASAP and have him/her work on the injured on the way to a first-rate trauma center. But there are only so many ER doctors so compromises are made - a lesser-trained paramedic flies out in the helicopter and tries to stabilize the patient on the way to the hospital where the ER doctor can get to work.
Combat is a less ideal environment to get injured in and so further compromises are made. There are, I'm sure, situations where fighting is too intense to risk 3 or 4, or even 1, personnel and a valuable vehicle to evacuate a critically injured soldier. Today, the field medic does what he can but, more than likely, the soldier is going to die. In that case an unmanned drone, which could be relatively cheap and could be used without risking additional lives, would offer be the soldier's only chance at survival. True, if the soldier is an army of one and there's noone else on the ground to load him into the drone then, until Orionblamblam's scifi body snatcher is invented, you're right, the idea is ridiculous.
An obvious implementation would be carriage aboard an medevac helicopter. The helicopter lands in a safe location as near as possible to the injured and launches the drone. Once the drone returns with the patient the helicopter proceeds as per current practice.

 

[bob225]

Looks like the project is moving forward:

Lake District: Jet suit paramedics ready for summer lift-off

Trials were delayed by Covid and funding but it is hoped the suits will be in use within months.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[publiusr]

It is a good way to maybe get a rope up to someone.

Fire a piton above them and toss a harness over.