HP Space Consultant

 

This article is one I am addressing directly to the world of space exploration. I would like to offer my hospital portering services free of charge to NASA, Roscosmos, SpaceX and every other space agency and private operator. I have already done this with the movie industry, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2013/08/portering-hits-hollywood.html, and the manufacturers of hospital equipment, see: https://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com/2023/09/acute-care-vehicles-1-original-fleet.html. A couple of weeks ago Butch and Suni came home. This pair of astronauts have become two of the most famous in history because of their impromptu asylum aboard the International Space Station after their Boeing Starliner vehicle suffered a breakdown while in orbit. Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Sunita Williams had only planned for an eight day mission, but this ended up being over nine months. I watched their return to earth with interest and trepidation. Luckily everything went without a hitch, at least until the Crew Dragon descent capsule had reached the earth. The spacecraft splashed down into the Gulf of Mexico, or Gulf of America as it is also now known, and remained afloat safely while the recovery vessels quickly sailed to the location. The capsule was hoisted onto the stern of the SpaceX Megan recovery ship. It was kept there for a while and then moved forward to the midships area. For some reason this movement is called "translation". See here for details: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2025/03/third-rail-radio-programme-203.html.

Then came the business of extracting the astronauts from the spacecraft, which is harder than you might think. There were four people inside it in total. Along with Butch and Suni were the ISS crewmembers Nick Hague and Aleksandr Gorbunov. The hatch was tightly sealed against the vacuum of space, and the personnel were wearing spacesuits and were strapped into their seats with safety harnesses. They could not move very well themselves because they'd spent many months living in microgravity. Returning to a gravitational field after that is a bit like getting out of a swimming pool and suddenly feeling heavy without the water's buoyancy, only much worse. The crewmembers had to be lifted out through the hatch and onto a waiting stretcher. Now, here comes the problem. Any trained and experienced HP can see very clearly that the medical team makes two series mistakes. They carry the astronauts by placing their arms under the astronaut's armpits. This is a method that used to be common and accepted practice in the NHS when I first started HPing, but that was in the late 1980's. It was very quickly stamped out in favour of the "Australian lift" and then later on new inventions like the Patslide, the "horace" hoist and some even more modern pieces of equipment. Patient moving with the armpit method can cause the patient and healthcare provider injury. For the patient it can strain the elbow joint and even cause fracture or dislocation. For the provider it means leaning which is a back care hazard. The second mistake is that the civilians fail to apply the brakes to the stretcher. This can cause it to shift unexpectedly when the patient is being loaded on or off it which can result in serious injury or damage to facilities. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYcO1ELvulQ. Therefore my offer is to join your teams as an official adviser on manual handling and other hospital portering skills. I will train your medical teams properly for no fee at all. Please respond by emailing me: bennyjay74@gmx.co.uk. I look forward to hearing from you.