Holland america medical care

Deleted due to duplicate posting

Emergency, I am glad you and HAL parted ways.

I must confess to having similar thoughts.

Since Canada and the US were brought up being the gold standard I would like to point out that as of 2017 22% of Canadian doctors where foreign trained as were 25% of US doctors.

I spent several years doing work for the US FDA that involved participating in negotiations with the EU and Japan. During that time I came in contact with a number of medical professionals from a wide range of countries from all over the world. Country is not the end all determiner of competence. There are are number of countries that produce very competent doctors. Just as pretty much all training programs end up producing some poor ones.

Or put another way if country was the primary way to identify competence then the US would not have need for malpractice insurance or fill the courts with legal cases dealing with such.

In 2013 I was told by HAL that I would not be allowed to have a cast removed on board the ship when I called to inquire. I was able to move to a brace right before leaving home, but it surprised me that they refused to remove the cast on the ship. I figure they didn't want to be responsible if the cast came off and there were issues with my wrist not having healed properly.

In 2013 I was told by HAL that I would not be allowed to have a cast removed on board the ship when I called to inquire. I was able to move to a brace right before leaving home, but it surprised me that they refused to remove the cast on the ship. I figure they didn't want to be responsible if the cast came off and there were issues with my wrist not having healed properly.

Having been through a cast removal and the lovely metal brace:rolleyes: I totally understand.

Each removal is Xrayed and reviewed by an orthopaedic surgeon to make sure that all is well. If things are not, surgery may be required and, once the surgeon is happy until support is not required, another cast has to applied.

This is a technique that specialized 'nurses' do (mine was male, ergo the quotation mark as many assume nurses are women). It takes a lot of skill to do the cast right under instruction of the surgeon so I totally understand HAL's reluctance.

Not only that, there can be big complications with casts - infection, swelling, etc. You are best to stay at home while you have one on. When I had my cast I was told I could NOT travel. thankfully, it came off before our cruise.

A brace is a PITA but it was key to my healing on my elbow surgery. My ortho surgeon swore by it and DH and I have a lot of respect for him so we followed orders.

But, even with the brace, I still had to have regular Xrays and reviews by the Ortho surgeon.

So do talk to yours (which I am sure you have done) and make sure you are cleared for travel.

A few years ago I had a life threatening illness aboard a princess ship. The dr was from South Africa ( where apparently many princess Drs are from). I received excellent care from the dr and his staff. Not so good- Mexican hospital- got medivaced back to the states ASAP. So, not to worry if princess level medical care is on HAL.

We also had 2 HAL doctors from South Africa. They were both highly qualified and took great care of Hubbie. We had to leave the ship 10 days into a 28 day cruise and HAL took care of all the arrangements. We were quite pleased they had all that medical equipment on board.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk