Hope You Never Need An Air Ambulance !

Air ambulances are aircraft that are intended to be used for aiding in crucial medical situations in remote areas where air transportation is more available. We simply call it a flying ambulance.

It is loaded with the same medical equipments like ECG and monitors, ventilators, medication and stretchers. It also has a medical crew on board. Unquestionably, this is the quickest way to attend to a medical emergency and carry the patient to the hospital to receive full medical attention.

Qualifications are high if you want to be a pilot of an air ambulance. You need to meet the requirements which are much higher than regular pilots that fly non-emergency flights. Extensive flight experience is a big advantage. This is to ensure the safety of the flight especially when carrying patients onboard.

The accreditation is being conducted by experts who are eligible to check for air ambulance safety. For the medical staff, it depends on which country you are in or the purpose of the service company. For services running under the Anglo-American model of service.

The helicopter is mostly used as transport. Their crew consists of Emergency Medical Technicians, Paramedics, flight nurses and sometimes physicians. Other service that concentrate on critical care are mostly staffed by doctors and nurses. On services which work on the Franco-German model, an air ambulance is used to provide high-end assistance to ground-based EMS most of the time.

Their crews are composed of physicians, sometimes surgeons, trauma specialist, anesthetist, specially trained in advance care paramedics and nurses. In these cases, the ground ambulance carries the patient not the aircraft.

The concept of carrying patients using an air ambulance began with the military many years ago. It started as early as World War I where different military groups tested the usage of Air Ambulances. Aircraft was still primitive at that time and had restricted capabilities.

The development continued until the Spanish Civil War, where a system was developed in transporting the injured to Germany. In 1950 to 1953, the U.S. military used helicopters as Air Ambulances during the Korean War.

In 1969, they included specially trained medical corpsman and used helicopters as ambulances which assisted the injured in Vietnam. The technology of the Air Ambulance continues to develop until now. Aside from helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft are also used for long distance travels.

Different organizations offer air ambulance services. Air ambulance service is also known as Aeromedical Evacuation or medevac. There are different types of air ambulance services.

It can be military or civilian models, government-funded, fee-for-service contirbuted by a business group or may be supported by public donations. You also need to distinguish the types of aircraft used. It could be a rotary-wing, fixed-wing or very huge airplane.

Most air ambulances, except for charter air craft or military airplanes are loaded for advanced life support. One difficulty on most air ambulance operations is the surrounding noise especially for helicopters. It also has limited space that constrains the on board medical crew to do certain medical examinations and assistance.

Cabin pressure is also a big factor with air ambulances as not all of them have pressurized cabins. That is why they require staff that are higher skilled so they can regulate the medications and also check for changes in physiology and behavior of gases against pressure.

These are the advantages and benefits of the development of air ambulance in our lives. We could also expect that in the future, there will be big progress in terms of Emergency Medical Services especially with air ambulances. We can be sure that wherever we are in times of emergency, help will still be able to reach us.