The Semantics of Healthcare - John wasn't fighting in Afghanistan he was busy being a GP!

[wellingtongoose]

As a medical student and soon to be doctor, I often watch TV programs about medicine and despair. Not because the likes of Casualty and Holby City (for those of you who don’t watch British TV these are hospital dramas) are not entertaining, but rather because they have a habit of misleading the public on what real doctors can do.

So in the spirit

Comments

[agentotter]

This is outstanding, thank you! I had always thought it was possible for him to have done something like this fellow who posted an AMA on reddit:
IAmA former Army field doctor with 4 tours under my belt AMA

There's a ton of really interesting info and first-hand accounts in that thread, mostly from Americans I think, if anybody's interested. From reading the thread it seems this particular doctor is an American, but it sounds like his job basically consisted of flying out on the helicopter to do medical evacuations of wounded.

With John it's also possible that he was wounded while in transit to somewhere else, performing a medical evacuation from a base to an airstrip or a more equipped hospital location, something like that. (There's a user in in that linked thread above called Mustaka who describes a scenario where he's transporting doctors, though I'm not sure when he says "army doctors" whether he's referring to actual doctors or medics.)

Anyway, would that sort of job be completely out of the realm of possibility for somebody who specialized in GP? Is there a field (like trauma surgery) in the UK armed forces that would be deploying its doctors in the field?

This is all just really interesting... I think in John's case they just screwed canon by making it too contradictory. I can't think of a way to really reconcile it without dismissing either what we see of his flashback in "A Study in Pink" or handwaving him getting the GP job in the next episode. Or maybe John doesn't have nightmares about the war, he has nightmares about documentary films he's watched about the war. He's a sensitive soul. ;D

[wellingtongoose]

Thank you for this very insightful comment. I believe that if John was an army GP in training, he would on a rare occasion be sent out to retrieve a wounded soldier. The soldier wouldn't be terribly wounded, mind you, that would be a call to the trauma specialists. Alternatively on on particular mission the RAMC were short staffed and drafted John in to help.

I've written both Part 2 (which explains how John can be both a doctor and fight in combat) and Part 3 (how to make surgeon!John realistic). Hope they will be helpful, you can view them on my profile page.