You may be surprised to read the headline. Aren’t medical flight crews supposed to provide care and not the other way round? If you’re running an air ambulance operation, caring for the physical and emotional well-being of your in-flight crew is a crucial part of running an effective operation. Because overworked, overstressed, and overtired crew members could potentially risk the safety of their patients and fellow crew members.
Providing Emotional Care to Your Crew
You may already have programs set up for employee assistance and critical stress debriefing. These programs can help in providing essential emotional support to your employees in their hour of need. At the same time, they may not be able to realize when they should sign up for these programs unless you make them mandatory.
These programs are especially necessary when a medical flight paramedic or doctor goes through an unexpected clinical event. Such incidents can put them at risk of becoming “second victims”. Make sure your crew members go through a mandatory emotional support and debriefing program after going through the following:
- First patient death on their watch
- Caring for pediatric patients
- Unexpected death of a patient
- Caring for a patient that they personally know
- Experiencing multiple bad outcomes
Promoting Emotional Health and Support for Medical Flight Crews
As an air ambulance operator, you need to be aware of the fact that your employees will be experiencing high levels of physical and emotional stress. In addition to promoting healthy lifestyle, you should take care to promote emotional support among your employees. Take them through regular training and counseling sessions so as to raise awareness about emotional and mental issues.
This could potentially help them in identifying any problematic behavior in their colleagues. This could then lead to timely intervention. So promoting peer support and early intervention could seriously make an impact on the health and wellness of your employees.
