Medically Stable and Security Safe

Travel magnifies risk. Being in an unfamiliar environment, dealing with fatigue, existing in a culture which is different to your own – all of these factors raise the probability of an event threatening the success of your mission.

Preparation is the key to reducing the risk. By using online resources such as government pages and embassy websites you can gather information on your destination. It is vital to remember that information must be used to drive action. If you have identified the highest risk in your destination as being opportunistic crime, then reduce that risk by not giving criminals the opportunity to rob you – arrive in the daytime, do not overtly display wealth, dress down, do not carry a lap top bag, be cautious of getting your phone out in public. These simple risk mitigation's reduce the likelihood of opportunistic crime.

Your ‘risk-profile’ are the aspects or your personality and personal choices which are visible to others and can increase your exposure to risk during travel. As medical escorts it is important that we understand which components of our risk-profile make us less safe when abroad. For example, it may be safe in our home country to openly affiliate with a faith-based, political, or LGBTQ community. However, in a foreign country that association could raise our risk and so, we should consider what we are making visible to others in order to reduce the risk and give the mission maximum likelihood of success.

Understanding the risk-profile of the patient is important, but in many cases very hard to discover, or often we do not find out about the patient’s profile until we are with them and making our first assessment.

As medical escorts we need to develop two antenna – one ‘medical’ which focuses on the patient’s condition, and one ‘security’ which focuses on the non-medical risks. We can do our utmost to provide safe medical transportation when we remember that ‘medically-stable’ does not automatically equal ‘security-safe’ .