That makes sense, but are the ships in Star Trek actually designed like that? (Or in real life, for that matter: are the medical facilities on, say, a Ford-class aircraft carrier distributed to different parts of the ship?)
The more I think about it, the more I think it might be more trouble than it’s worth compared to centralizing them. It introduces worries about balancing patient load and staffing availability between multiple sites, for instance.
I think it makes sense on the Enterprise-D because of the saucer separation, but on other big ships that don’t have that feature, maybe not so much.
I can’t say for certain because I haven’t fully explored the logistics, but here’s a point for consideration. In my city, they have 3 different hospitals (not associated with each other). In addition to that, there are about 10 standalone ERs, all of which are associated with one of the hospitals. They could build one giant ED within the hospitals, but they chose to distribute them.
Another consideration for them compared to us, they have transporters. So, if they needed something or someone in a particular place, they could arrange that. I don’t know if that’s more an argument for or against centralized medical care.
How big is your city? Both modern aircraft carriers and the Enterprise-D carried on the order of a few thousand crew, which is more like a pretty small town. Your talk of “3 hospitals and 10 standalone ERs” is more on the scale of something like the Voth city ship from Voyager.
I don’t know the number of people, but it’s not a huge city. My point wasn’t how many my city has, it was the distributed part that might be helpful.
I’m not saying they need 10+ different places like my city, but 2-4 places might work out better for them–I don’t know.
My city also is not ready for battle with the Borg or prepared to take on alien pathogens. Their needs are clearly different.
Bigger ships would probably have multiple med bays, not bigger ones. You’d want redundancy in times of red alerts.
That makes sense, but are the ships in Star Trek actually designed like that? (Or in real life, for that matter: are the medical facilities on, say, a Ford-class aircraft carrier distributed to different parts of the ship?)
The more I think about it, the more I think it might be more trouble than it’s worth compared to centralizing them. It introduces worries about balancing patient load and staffing availability between multiple sites, for instance.
I think it makes sense on the Enterprise-D because of the saucer separation, but on other big ships that don’t have that feature, maybe not so much.
I can’t say for certain because I haven’t fully explored the logistics, but here’s a point for consideration. In my city, they have 3 different hospitals (not associated with each other). In addition to that, there are about 10 standalone ERs, all of which are associated with one of the hospitals. They could build one giant ED within the hospitals, but they chose to distribute them.
Another consideration for them compared to us, they have transporters. So, if they needed something or someone in a particular place, they could arrange that. I don’t know if that’s more an argument for or against centralized medical care.
How big is your city? Both modern aircraft carriers and the Enterprise-D carried on the order of a few thousand crew, which is more like a pretty small town. Your talk of “3 hospitals and 10 standalone ERs” is more on the scale of something like the Voth city ship from Voyager.
I don’t know the number of people, but it’s not a huge city. My point wasn’t how many my city has, it was the distributed part that might be helpful. I’m not saying they need 10+ different places like my city, but 2-4 places might work out better for them–I don’t know.
My city also is not ready for battle with the Borg or prepared to take on alien pathogens. Their needs are clearly different.
was about to say this. also it would reduce transportation time for patients.