Sick while on board

[Coopie]

Has anyone had any type of experience with any hospital off the ship while in the Bahamas or Caribbean? Also, just curious which islands do they usually get you too if need be for a hospital.

[Hlitner]

Has anyone had any type of experience with any hospital off the ship while in the Bahamas or Caribbean? Also, just curious which islands do they usually get you too if need be for a hospital.

 

If the ship's physician decides that a passenger needs to get to land-based medical care then its a matter of urgency. If necessary, the Captain can decide to make for the nearest port where the patient can be safety evacuated. If it is possible (and medically advisable) they will treat the passenger onboard and take them off at the next regular port. There is guarantee that the port would have a decent hospital...which is a good reason for cruisers to have some kind of medical evacuation insurance. Helicopter evacuations get a lot of publicity on CC (and in the press) but are actually quite rare. Every effort is made to avoid a helicopter evacuation because it is a somewhat risky operation.

 

Of our more then 100 cruises (all over the world) we have diverted(for a medical emergency) to a nearby port in 4 or 5 cases. I can only specificallly recall two recent cases...one on a Transatlantic cruise when we stopped at Bermuda...and other time (many years ago) when a crew member was seriously injured on the old Sun Viking. This was a somewhat dramatic case since it involved a night evacuation in very bad conditions. The Captain diverted to Puerto Plata, DR...but the winds and lack of decent buoy lights made a docking too dangerous. So they took the crewman off the ship (late at night) in an open lifeboat which had to navigate heavy seas for about a 2 mile run into the port. The crewman was then immediately put on a medical evac jet which had been chartered by the cruise line and flown back to Miami. A few days later the Captain told us that the crew member was doing well at a Miami hospital.

 

We have also seen 3 helicopter evacs on our cruises. One was in the Pacific off the coast of northern Mexico...another was off the coast of France....and the third was near Madeira. Each of those was done in the daytime with very good weather conditions. The one off the coast of Mexico was somewhat different because we were out of the range of any helicopter. The US Nave Seals dispatched a Seal special ops helicopter (from the San Diego area) along with a KC-130 Aerial Tanker necessary to refuel the chopper. The rescue of a very ill passenger was successful and he was evacuated directly to San Diego.

 

Hank

Edited April 25, 2017 by Hlitner

[Shmoo here]

Has anyone had any type of experience with any hospital off the ship while in the Bahamas or Caribbean? Also, just curious which islands do they usually get you too if need be for a hospital.

Well, it would depend. On how sick you are. Whether the ship's doctor says you need to be medically removed. And where you are.

 

Yes, there are people who have experience with such things.

[navybankerteacher]

We've seen I'll/injured passengers taken off many times - most often at scheduled ports of call, but in 2008 Noordam sailed back south for a couple of hours to get within range for midnight helicopter evacuation to San Juan; in 2015 Oosterdam diverted to get close enough to land for a Canadian Coast Guard vessel to evacuate a passenger - essentially eliminating by delay our Vancouver port call; this past February Westerdam sailed three hours back to San Diego to drop off an injured passenger.

[Krazy Kruizers]

The infirmary on a ship is not able to handle serious medical problems. Thus the doctor makes a decision and talks to the captain who then makes the arrangements to have the person removed from the ship -- where it happens depends on if the ship can dock, or a tender is needed or a helicopter.

We have seen many, many medical emergencies in Europe, Caribbean, Atlantic, Pacific, etc.

We have seen coast guard helicopters do unbelievable maneuvers to remove a passenger from the ship. The weather so bad off the coast of Oregon, the medical nurse had to be left on the ship after the passenger was air lifted. That is just one example.

Some of the ports where people have been taken off the ship may not have the best hospitals.

[bean24]

I fell down a flight of stairs in Roaton Honduras. The hospital was a building with a giant hyperbaric chamber (huge diving area) and not much else. Back on the ship they X-rayed me, gave me a tetanus shot and stitched me up.

My son got sick in Bermuda the hospital was amazing, better care than some US ER's. It's just hit or miss, but we still cruise once a year

 

 

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