Medical planning for expeditions.
Medical planning requires the expedition physician to draw from many aspects of the knowledge base of wilderness and environmental medicine and to learn and use lessons from those that have gone before. The medical plan is dependent on parameters of the expedition objective, scope, and resources and is developed cooperatively with the overall operational plan. The gathering of medical intelligence is crucial to the planning process and includes data specific to the location of the objective area and the expedition party itself. Medical screening of individual participants should be done for extended- or high-performance ventures. Medical training of both medical and nonmedical expedition party members is the responsibility of the medical planner. The contents, configuration, and deployment of medical kits depends on several variables and must be tailored to the individual venture. Protocols for preventive medicine measures, medical communications, and casualty evacuation are all included in the medical plan. It is hoped that with the focus of attention and effort that appropriate medical planning requires, unnecessary suffering and death will be less frequent as the boundaries of human exploration continue to expand.
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Saint Vincent Hospital and Health Center, Billings, Montana.
D004635:Emergency Medicine; D005101:Expeditions; D006801:Humans; D011315:Preventive Medicine; D014187:Transportation of Patients