So this whole week so far has been mostly Field Safety Skills like how not to die. One instructor put up a graph with an X & Y axis. On one axis was the risk of death and the other was something like the task. Where the two met was green, further out it was yellow, orange and then red which was basically death. So he went on to say that with each task you want to minimize your risk of death, and if you are in the yellow, well that’s pretty good. He reminded  me of Jeff Spicoli from Class of Ridgemont High with his bleach blonde hair and his surfer mentality (he was from Colorado so maybe it was more of a snowboarder mentality but you get the jist). I redrew the graph, x is the best case scenario we can hope for here.  Red is like, dead…

We also had a meeting about safety in our workplace and had to make a list regarding these issues…
What can kill you in your area of work?
How can you stop it from killing you?
What can kill others in your work area?
How can you prevent it?
We were also asked to draw a picture. I drew a picture of old man winder blowing cold down on  my stick figure self standing outside my tent with my snowman friend and I was thinking “burr its  #$%^@* cold!” I’m most worried the cold will kill me. Most other people drew pictures of fork  lifts and other large vehicles running people over.

Lets face it, it’s not a safe environment (thats why they have me there) we are 1000 miles from  a base in Antarctica, not 1000 miles from a major trauma center.   So basically I’m the only health care provider for 1000 miles, and the closest place to send someone (if the weather obides, is a small base clinic.   I’ll give it to the NSF, they are  focused on safety and I feel that I’m given all the gear I could imagine I could need.  I’ll go over my gear more in another post, but they have some good stuff I take with me.  Now I just need to train my crew on trauma drills and hopefully train someone to do an IV incase I ever need one!!

I’m for sure happy to be supporting the science here.