On tonight’s episode of Rescue: Extreme Medics, Aberdeen’s trauma team attend a plane crash outside Elgin.
The Channel 4 docuseries, which airs on Mondays at 9pm, follows an elite team of clinicians that perform life-saving work in the most remote locations.
For the north and north-east of Scotland, many of these rescues are handled at Aberdeen’s major trauma centre (MTC).
Man, 55, falls 100ft from the sky
On tonight’s episode, the north trauma team and air ambulance are dispatched when a call comes in to say a 55-year-old man has crashed his light aircraft minutes after take-off.
Patient Iain fell 100ft (30m) from the sky, about 60 miles from the nearest major trauma centre in Aberdeen.
He suffered a “significant” head injury and multiple other serious injuries.
In the show, we see Aberdeen Royal Infirmary’s trauma consultant Catharina Hartman preparing the team for the patient’s arrival.
She contemplates what condition the patient might be in, saying: “100ft – that’s around 10 storeys.
“If you were to fall that height from a building, well, no one could survive that.”
Lucky to be alive, Iain is taken to ARI, but while the team begins to assess the extent of his injuries, serious concern is raised about the significance of his spinal injury and whether Iain will ever walk again.
Read more about the investigation into the incident here.
Dumper truck falls on man
Meanwhile, in the west, medics are sent to tend to 41-year-old Max, who has been crushed under a dumper while working in rural Dumfriesshire.
Clinician Julie, on the trauma desk in Glasgow, is concerned about the patient rapidly deteriorating and tasks the trauma team by helicopter to the patient.
The consultant on the retrieval team, Dr Neil McMahan, says their job is to “bring the hospital to the patient”.
They need to work quickly and urgently to realign Max’s leg in the middle of the field before rushing him to the Major Trauma Centre at Glasgow Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
During the journey to the crash site, Dr McMahan has serious concerns about what awaits them.
He said: “Crushed by a dumper truck doesn’t make you think of minor injuries.
“Several tonnes of agricultural equipment, that’s not compatible with life.”
How can I watch Rescue: Extreme Medics?
Episodes of the documentary series, featuring the Aberdeen trauma team, air Mondays at 9pm on Channel 4 and All 4.
