Flight teams address stress

nursebedlam · Jul 18, 2004

Sun, Jul. 18, 2004

By Sarah Sabalos

Knight Ridder

Flight nurses and paramedics with Providence Heart Institute's Life Reach Air Medical Transport began Friday's 24-hour shift with a Critical Incident Stress Debriefing.

It is a formal name for what program director Kelly Hawsey called a gut check, a chance to discuss feelings and thoughts regarding the fatal Regional One helicopter crash Tuesday in Newberry.

Many attended Thursday's memorial service for the three crew members who died, and all had shown their concern by sending food and flowers.

"Is anyone's family giving them pressure about stopping flying?" asked nurse/paramedic Bridget Barret-Gonzales. "I think my parents are concerned, but my husband says, 'You have a better chance of dying in a car wreck.'"

No one's family had raised new concerns about the job, but Hawsey said that is more common for those touched by their first work-related tragedy. Most of these professionals have worked on emergency air ambulance teams for years.

"You have to sit down and talk it out, though, or it becomes a wedge," she said.

This is the closely knit world of a flight crew, where a dozen personalities join in pursuit of the same goals.

A job they love

"I can't believe they pay me to do this," flight nurse Stacie Mason of Greenville said.

"Part of it's the corny nurse thing - I like helping people - but it's also about managing patients outside the hospital. No residents, no doctors, no anesthesiologists.

"We're each other's support. We trust each other and rely on each other, whatever comes our way."

Although there's no typical shift, crew members spend a lot of time in their own small quarters at Bruner (each has sleep and shower facilities) waiting for flight calls to come in over their handheld radios.

Some days, they get several calls; others, none. When they are not flying, they do in-service training, clinical rotations and school visits. Some have second jobs.

They also visit patients. "Sometimes, someone you thought was going to die is sitting up, eating lunch," Mason said.

This team knows its job carries an inherent risk: They were asked to fly to Tuesday's emergency on Interstate 26 but declined because of foggy weather and another air ambulance crew's decision not to fly.

"This could happen to any of us," nurse/paramedic Marshall Higgins said after the meeting.

But they disagreed with the widely held idea that they risk their lives with every trip.

"Actually, if we're risking our lives, we're doing something wrong," paramedic Philip Howell said. "We do everything we can to mitigate the risk contingency plans, maintenance checks."

Meticulous caution

Although the crew is usually at Bruner, the red helicopter, which has a St. Christopher's medal in the cockpit and an S.C. sticker on the tail, is their true center.

Full of neatly arranged medications and supplies, the aircraft can go as high as 20,000 feet but usually hovers around 2,500. It has run smoothly during its three-year tenure.

Pilot Jimmy Gosnell, who has lost 11 friends in aircraft crashes, said the helicopter is checked at least three times a day.

"It's looked at more than any aircraft I've ever flown, including the Army," he said from the helipad.

And it only takes one person's objection to cancel a flight.

Flying as a passenger on commercial airlines makes this crew more nervous than work does.

"I don't like not being able to hear the controller," Barret-Gonzales said. "And you don't know the pilot."

Higgins, along with many other crew members, said skewed, imprecise media coverage has led to an incorrect assumption about the professionals who fly air ambulances - that they dash, impetuously and full-tilt, into all manner of emergencies regardless of circumstances.

"People's opinions are based on big headlines, even if the article isn't as bad," Hawsey said. "The headline 'Pilot Error' is what you see."

The National Transportation Board, Higgins said, does not complete its own report until a year after a crash.

"So how can [the media] decide what happened the next day?" he said. "You don't realize who you're hurting ... the pilot's wife, for example, who thinks, 'Now everyone's going to blame my husband.'"

Mason said such coverage frightens patients, as well.

"A man who rolled his truck on the interstate this morning in Newberry County was asking us about the weather," she said. "He really needed to fly, and he was afraid to."

http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/news/local/9182970.htm