What happens when your patient is dying but you don’t have the equipment that you need to save them? In cases where it’s not an emergency, sometimes doctors might transfer patients to another hospital who might have the equipment, or maybe they can request to borrow said equipment in order to help their patient.But what if the patient was dying now and you needed the equipment but it was 280 miles away? Sounds like there’s really nothing you can do, right? However thanks to the quick-thinking staff at a hospital in Norway, they managed to rouse the country’s air force and use one of their F-16 fighter jets to help transport the equipment over in less time than it takes to deliver a pizza.
What happened is that the hospital the patient is in was located in Bodø. However the hospital that had the equipment they needed to perform a lung and heart procedure was in a hospital at Trondheim which is 280 miles away. Speaking to AFP, Anders Wetting Carlsen, chief doctor at Trondheim’s Saint Olaf hospital said that they decided to contact the local air force base who had two F-16 jets that were preparing to take off. “They didn’t ask any questions, except for what size the machine was.”
The air squadron head Borge Kleppe then told the Norwegian daily Verdens Gang that because of the emergency, the pilot actually flew the jet faster than they normally would. “Usually we cover that distance in 35 minutes. But given the special nature of the cargo, the pilot stepped on it and arrived at the destination less than 25 minutes later.”
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