Many health care providers can regale us with their calls to duty when someone suddenly becomes ill in an airplane. On one had, one might think, “Oh Great, just when I was trying to take a nap”. On the other hand, some like to leap into action to break up the monotony of a transatlantic flight. A colleague of mine who is an OB/GYN has had the misfortune to the only health care provider on not one but two flights. No nurses on board (at least none who volunteered), no other doctors. Of course, as an ER doc, you usually trump almost every other doc on board except for maybe a cardiologist in a cardiac arrest or an orthopaedist in a dislocated joint. Clearly my friend was hoping there would be an ER doc on board – she does not relish evaluating a middle aged fat man who collapsed in the aisle! That is what happened to her – fortunately just as the plane was making its final approach to land. This man went down and appeared initially not to be breathing or have a pulse. She started CPR when the stewardess brought over the AED (defibrillator) – fortunately as it was being connected, the man suddenly started moaning and began to show signs of life. After the plane landed, EMS came on board and found the guy was in rapid afib (atrial fibrillation) – so my friend thinks the guy never fully coded – but just had really low blood pressure and the chest compressions just woke him up!
Another time the plane had just taken off when she answered the call for medical assistance. This time it was an elderly Mongolian woman who appeared to be clutching her abdomen. Of course there was no translator so she basically just tried to examine her while sitting in the chair (not an easy thing!). She did not appear to be very tender fortunately. The crew asked if they needed to turn around and land the plane (which by the way, costs a TON in wasted time and fuel). Since her exam appeared to be pretty benign, my friend supposed the lady was just airsick and told the crew that they did not need to turn around. Unfortunately they made her sit next to this woman (who started vomiting in the air sick bag) for the next hour in case anything happened! Of course the seat was right next to the bathroom. Great. A flight next to a vomiting woman and smell lavatory.
In both these cases she did not receive any official Thank You, free flight, or air miles. You’d think they could ante up a little bit – after all she was supposed to be on vacation!
Buddy of mine is an EMT I and his wife is an RN, on a flight guy goes down, he does cpr, starts lines, gets on the radio for mcep, and at the end of the flight, his wife, who’d done nothing constructive gets all the credit on tv. Hilarious. They did get a free flight though.