The Sky's the Limit
By Barbara Marquand
The exciting, fast-paced specialties of flight nursing and medical transport nursing offer career opportunities that soar above the crowd.
Nursing articles provided by MinorityNurse.com.
Edwin Drummond, RN, never knows what kinds of cases he'll see as a flight nurse. He might treat a young man who has lost his leg in a motorcycle accident or an elderly woman who fell down a flight of stairs or a child with severe burns. But as he straps on his helmet and steps aboard the whirring helicopter, there is one thing he does know: Someone's life will depend on him.
With such widely varying challenges and tremendous life-and-death responsibility, a career in flight nursing or medical transport nursing isn't for everybody. But for those nurses with the right training, experience and personality, the soaring rewards can't be beat.
"When you fly to the scene [of an accident or other emergency], everyone's waiting for you, and you get to intervene and save a life," says Drummond, an African-American flight nurse for Washington Hospital Center's MedSTAR Transport emergency medical helicopter service in Washington, D.C. "When it goes well, it makes you really feel good."
Air medical transport dates back to 1870 when hot air balloons were used to evacuate wounded soldiers during the siege of Paris in the Franco-Prussian War, according to a history compiled by Washington Hospital Center. Later, the U.S. military's use of planes and helicopters in World War II, the Korean conflict and Vietnam led to the development of air transportation systems for civilian medical needs. In 1972, St. Anthony's Hospital in Denver, Colo., began "Flight for Life," the first dedicated hospital-based air transport service. Today more than 300 such services in the United States help save people's lives.
The standard flight crew on a medical transport helicopter or airplane typically includes a pilot, a paramedic and a nurse; additional crew can be added when necessary. A small percentage of air transport services employ doctors as part of their flight crews. The crews transport patients from one hospital to another as well as fly to scenes of accidents and disasters,
