After my 1st injury I found I had prepared for none of it. Not the paperwork, not the hospital, not the information a doctor needed from me. Three things changed after that trip.
A will
USPA puts skydiving fatalities at 0.51 per 100,000 jumps (USPA safety FAQ).
That figure is an average over a whole population, and a skilled minority of coaches, instructors, examiners and judges accounts for a large share of the jumps in it. It is not a personal risk estimate for any one jumper, and I stopped treating it as one.
I did not have a will. I do now. The part I found harder than expected was digital assets, which a traditional will handles poorly - accounts move, passwords get reset, and the document ages faster than the estate does.
Knowing which hospital
In Thailand, several of the places Google Maps calls hospitals had neither the X-ray equipment nor the doctor to deal with a dislocated shoulder. That is not surprising when the dropzone is a long way from a city, but I found it out while injured rather than before.
Now I look up the nearest hospital that can actually treat a trauma case before I travel, and I do not assume the dropzone has it worked out.
The details a hospital asks for
I understood about half of what the Thai doctor told me about the diagnosis. I was lucky that he chose the non-surgical route.
The things I was asked for, and did not have in one place:
- passport and ID details
- medical history
- insurance
- treatment preference
- emergency contact
I keep them together now. Sorting that out takes an evening at home and is impossible to do well from a treatment room in a language you do not speak.