personally, while i DO think drinking in a middle of a fight is weird and makes no sense, realistic speaking, in this game it is far less realistic to encounter a combat, die, go back into the past where u were still alive, drink preemptive potions and retry.
sadly i wouldnt want a mod that lets u pause, magickally go into the alchemy menu and reappear in the battlefield with some potion effect. to me there must be a downside, like drinking animation or that it takes like 30 seconds for the potion to actually start effecting geralt, but adding animation is not possible at this point and adding a delay time doesnt seem easy to do either....