Re-instatement of Military Hospitals
Join Date: Aug 2006
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The other point about military hospitals is they were emergency hospitals. They were designed to cope with large numbers of similarly injured casualties.
In peacetime or times of low usage it made medical sense to use them to augment the NHS. This would enable staff to keep in current practise and relieve pressure on the NHS hospitals.
At the outset of GW1 RAF Waddington had a hangar set up as a holding area and Nocton Hall was reactivated as an emergency hospital, it was not used by the NHS at that time. It had been in C&M and regualrly activiated by a USAF Reserve Hospital.
Had things turned out badly casualities could have been treated without drama; the only disruption to the NHS would have been from NHS staff called forward as reserves. Our local GP was served papers to back fill slots at Lincoln or Nocton.
Military hospitals, hospital ships and much else of military equipment and facilities are hopefully never used and lie gathering dust. They are an insurance policy.
In peacetime or times of low usage it made medical sense to use them to augment the NHS. This would enable staff to keep in current practise and relieve pressure on the NHS hospitals.
At the outset of GW1 RAF Waddington had a hangar set up as a holding area and Nocton Hall was reactivated as an emergency hospital, it was not used by the NHS at that time. It had been in C&M and regualrly activiated by a USAF Reserve Hospital.
Had things turned out badly casualities could have been treated without drama; the only disruption to the NHS would have been from NHS staff called forward as reserves. Our local GP was served papers to back fill slots at Lincoln or Nocton.
Military hospitals, hospital ships and much else of military equipment and facilities are hopefully never used and lie gathering dust. They are an insurance policy.
So. 19 replies to my post.
For what it's worth, which isn't much, my own experience of military hospitalisation was in what constituted a "sanatorium", as against sick quarters, at RAFC Cranwell. The nursing was excellent and the place spotless, comparing with the squalid chaos of the NHS hospital at Birmingham that had been treating me, including a minor operation. Like many others, I was aware of what was going on throughout, of the inane chatter of the surgeon and the pain that he was inflicting on me, but totally unable to make my condition known. Another NHS hospital nearly did for me by sending me home with identified appendicitis that had "gone cold". Two days later they had me back for an emergency operation as it had burst. Safe in their hands? Muppets!
