Originally posted by: JeffreyLebowski
WTF, a cruise ship should have facilities to handle something like this. What do they do if someone breaks a leg or a worker gets seriously injured in the engine room?
Broken legs are usually an easy fix, unless it's a multiple compound fracture. Any really bad injuries would likely get an SOS, with a Coast Guard/Navy rescue. Like was said by 911paramedic, a carrier has a full hospital-like area on board, and is equipped to do surgery. How often would a cruise ship need that sort of capabilities? Probably not often enough to be worth the expense (and let's face it, it's the bottom line that most businesses worry about, right?). Part of the reason why, whenever you hear about a cruise ship coming back with 1/2 or more of the people on board sick, that they couldn't handle it.
I do remember, back ~26-27 years ago, when I was on board a fast frigate (my first ship), all we had was an E-6 hospital corpsman. But he'd been trained to do pretty much anything a doctor could do, all the way up to minor surgery if needed. "Doc" was pretty cool too!
