Inside Europe's biggest military critical care ward

[The Dragon Master]

A look at work inside the new critical care ward at the £545m Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, where injured troops evacuated from Afghanistan are being treated.



At the hospital, 23-year old Pte Andrew Garthwaite is greeted warmly by a man he doesn't remember.



It is the trauma surgeon who operated him in the crucial hours immediately after he was badly wounded in Helmand some six months ago, when a Taliban rocket-propelled grenade took off Andrew's right arm and killed one of his comrades.



Wing Cdr William van Niekerk was working at the field hospital at Camp Bastion when Andrew was brought in, and remembers him well.



Now, the surgeon is back in the UK working at the new Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, which treats all the military casualties evacuated from Helmand. He is pleased with how well the young soldier's wounds are healing.



Andrew, who is serving with the Queen's Royal Lancers, is now undergoing rehabilitation at Headley Court in Surrey, but comes back to the hospital regularly for his injuries to be reviewed. He is hoping to be able to receive a bionic arm, so he can continue his career in the Army.



It's called Target Nerve Reinnervation, and what happens is they're going to pull the nerves from the stump around and into my chest area - and the nerves are going to talk to the muscles within the pec and when I think about doing stuff, my pec will move and operate the arm by using different muscles of my body, so with my thinking, the arm will move, he explains.

Rest of article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11718320



This is quite interesting as military personnel were complaining about the health care that hey got when they came back from war. Good to see that they are doing something!