Helicopter Medics

[cookie_monster]

Hi,

Is there anyone out there who is/who knows anything about becoming a doctor on the air ambulances?

I'm a hopeful 2010 entrant to med school, and emergency medicine is a direction I'm interested in going in...

CM x

[Spencer Wells]

Incredibly difficult to get into - most are A&E or anaesthetic registrars. You only get to do it for 6 months and then rotate onto a new (non-helicopter) job. The only long-term ones I can think of are the RAF-operated Northern Air Ambulance - so you'd have to join the RAF to get to do that.

[Leo2004]

Hey there,

Being interested in prehospital care/A+E/Trauma/anaesthesia, I did a month
with HEMS this year and found out the lowdown...

Prehospital care in Uk is provided by mainly GPs under the BASICs scheme, who
have extra prehospital training thru BASICS, run by one of the anaesthetic consultants
who also works with HEMS. These generally take emergency or anaesthetics regs on a voluntary or per diem basis, I believe.

The air ambulance services which have doctors on them take docs with experience
to reg level in anaesthetics or emergency medicine. Lots of these are I believe overseen
by Dr Gareth Davies of HEMS/Royal London (an A+E consultant). The day to day running
of HEMS is run by Dr Anne Weaver, an A+E consultant at the Royal London, in conjunction with other A+E consultants there, such as Dr Gareth Grier.

The HEMS registrars are mainly regs/consultants in emergency medicine, with a few being anaesthetists.

Hope this helps!

[cookie_monster]

That's really helpful thanks!!

[Keeley]

Dr Gareth Davies of HEMS/Royal London (an A+E consultant).

Oooh, wasn't he the guy on Trauma years ago?

[f_debelder]

Oooh, wasn't he the guy on Trauma years ago?

Yep. All lovely people, Dr. Weaver especially. Dr. Grier is one cool dude, a dead nice consultant.

[Leo2004]

Agree entirely - fantastic people, uberskilled doctors and very very inclusive to getting students really involved. My best time in all medschool. Really want to be good enough to do six months as a hems reg one day to learn so much more from them when i know more...

[Frank E]

Missed this.
The father of a lass I used to see was a SAR pilot but with a commercial operator, though I think he flew an RAF chopper. My mate Gus is a winchman on West Coast SAR and definitely has never been in the RAF. I love all that stuff so quite envious.
As far as I know they get the nearest available trained Doctor.

Even where they have full time Doctors assigned to an air ambulance service I doubt anywhere would have a permanent role for flying Doctors other than the armed forces. There possibly wouldn't be enough shouts to keep one's skills refreshed.

Here in the North and further up in the highlands because of the distribution of the population and the distance between heli and medical facilities they are more likely to scramble a GP to a shout from an extremely rural clinic who'll use their car and attend to the incident while the air ambulance is getting there.

Such a GP would probably be trained in immediate care through BASICS http://www.basics-scotland.org.uk , who run courses for medical practitioners (Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics) in immediate medical care, prehospital care, transfer, incident management. I'm not sure the exact interfaces between BASICs the emergency services and emergency response centres but I guess BASICS would provide a list (if not a rota) of immediate care trained Docs for the emergency response centre to call out.

I guess the courses would be similar in all their regional centres but may have scope for variations due to different terrain in different Trust areas (no point in a heap of mountain rescue Pt. transfer technique course content for east anglia or deepwater heliox decompression content for W. Midlands)
Most of the people involved with BASICS on the medical side are GPs, though there are Emergency Medicine Consultants and Doctors, Paramedics, Nurse Practitioners, Anaesthetists, Resus Officers... <deleted>

BASICS also fundraise for the Sandpiper trust which formed to provide rural Doctors with the equipment to provide immediate at the scene care care in the critical golden hour. The fully kitted bags are becoming a defacto standard in immediate care. http://www.sandpipertrust.org/
Incidentally, the training of rural GPs in immediate care came about due to a helicopter disaster.

Students can register with BASICS free.

[InternalOptimist]

Good question, I am at medical school currently and I am somewhat interested in the same thing, though keeping my options open. I can imagine it would be really competitive though!
I didn't imagine that they would limit the time doing it to 6 months though, it would seem to me the longer you did it for the better you would become!

[Medic2013]

'ello all,

I'm a third year with EM/Conflict and Catastrophe Medicine as my intended career path. My advice would be try to prepare as early as possible, but without becoming tunnel-visioned!

So, in terms of gaining experience and seeing if it's the kind of thing you might be interested, here's some suggestions...

St John Amb/BRC - just to see if you like EM, and provides an opportunity for *some* ambulance work. Been part of it for a fair few years and currently doing ambulance work.
Free training, work with doctors on ambulances, and I started out as a first aider. Now here's me!: London Marathon 2010: Michelle Heaton stretched away with exhaustion | Mail Online

Special Constable - again, puts you through your paces and helps in dealing with difficult situations and circumstances.
Armed Forces - see if you can get a cadetship/join an OTC and get some EM experience with a RAMC detachment.
Join BASICS (once you get into med school) - I only joined so I could do the PhEC course as it's discounted for students. Aside from that, the c£50 isn't worth it IMHO - there isn't much you get in return for being a Student Member (in London anyhow).

If you want to chat a bit more about it, feel free to PM hehe.