Medical questions to help with a novel.

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Hello.

I'm hoping this is an appropriate place to be asking questions of this nature, if it isn't I'd appreciate a redirect to somewhere more suitable.

I am a writer that is currently working on a project and was hoping to acquire some information to help me with a scene I am writing. It involves a surgeon turning up at a hospital and preparing to enter into emergency surgery upon a large muscular man that has fallen from a great height. Let's say a fall of around 200 feet from the top of a building, falling upon another man who takes the first impact of the fall.

I'm interested in knowing two things that I'm hoping could be answered here.

Firstly: The usual procedure that someone coming into emergency surgery would go through, from entering the door to the hospital until entering the OR.

And secondly: What would be the predicted wounds that one might expect to suffer from such a fall and what initial treatment would be administered under these circumstances.

I appreciate any information that can be given to help me out.

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Type: Question • Score: 5 • Views: 442 • Replies: 7

@Forwantofnowt,

I imagine every health authority has its own procedures so you need to make clear where your novel is set.

To be honest you’d be better off writing to some medical publication, maybe your local hospital has a newsletter, if you wrote to somewhere like that you might actually get in contact with someone who knows what they’re talking about.

Good luck and keep writing.

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@izzythepush,

Yeah, but 200 feet. My layman's opinion is that a hospital would be superfluous.

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@roger,

In a 200 foot drop with Earth's gravity in a vacuum you will reach a speed of 77 mph. The actual velocity maybe a little lower in atmosphere. People have survived falls at 120 mph (which is the fastest a human body falls in normal air pressure).

I think surviving this is possible if you are lucky and land on something soft. Maybe another body would soften the blow enough if you happened to land just right. The Physics is that skinny people will fall slower than fat people in an atmosphere because the effect of air resistance is greater the less mass you have. I suspect that being small will increase your change of surviving such a fall.

I can't answer the medical questions.

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@izzythepush,

@izzythepush Thanks for the reply.

I'm just trying to run through in my mind a surgeon arriving at the hospital and then preparing for an emergency surgery. So, they come in, go to a staff room, then... a separate room for putting on their scrubs, or perhaps that'd be an adjoining room to where they'd clean up before the surgery etc? It doesn't have to be incredibly detailed, just more of the process to be explained. It's not like I'll explain it all in the chapter, it's more just for my sake so that I'm able to picture it in my mind. That way it'll come across as believable.

I appreciate the suggestions though, perhaps a medical publication or something similar would be of help.

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@roger,

That's kinda the point of the fall, there's a fantasy/sci-fi element to it. So I can bend reality (in regards to the fact that it'd probably kill someone), and I'm using that to show that the guy is pretty much unstoppable.

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@Forwantofnowt,

There are FB groups for writers. Try Word Birds or Fiction Writing and ask there.

Medical questions to help with a novel.

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