Nosey medical questionnaire

[tmmorris]

I went for my class 2 renewal today (passed - whew!). The form I had to fill in asked me lots of what were frankly irrelevant questions: what type of aircraft I fly, how many hours since last medical, type of licence held, &c., which are nothing to do with the medical. All the medical needs to do is to assess whether you meet the standard - yes or no.

What is the CAA doing with all this information? I don't want to be paranoid, but if they want to know things like this they should ask legitimately, not tack it onto the medical where it doesn't belong.

Tim

[BRL]

Hi Tim. I am going to copy this to the medical forum for you so you can see if you have any 'official' response from there.
There are always a lot of 'irrelevant' stuff on offical forms and the like but I suspect its just the CAA covering thier bums and having to include questions like that for legal reasons. I hope someone can come up with a better answer though, would be quite intersting to see why as you ask.

[tacpot]

Having have a couple of medicals now, I am realising that the AMEs actually know quite a bit about the medical aspect of flying!!! This knowledge when combined with the answers to these apparently nosey questions allow the AME to offer specific advice, as well as assess your fitness to fly.

You can surely appreciate that someone flying a high-performance complex aircraft with an oxygen system, and who also smokes has a higher risk of a hypoxic incident than a smoker flying a microlight. The AME may suggest giving up smoking to one pilot, and not to the other.

These questions give the AME the background information they need to provide a full service to both yourself and the CAA.

[englishal]

Sounds like a crock of s*it to me. I think an AME should be able to tell if you're fit to fly or not by a medical examination, not by questions about what you fly. After all you're more likely to have a hypoxic incident in a 'simple' Cessna 172 at 12,000' than you are in a King Air at 25,000', and you're also more likely to to have one if you're an unfit fat b**tard as opposed to an olympic cyclist...And a doctor will ALWAYS advise giving up smoking :D

Cheers
EA:D

[Mike Cross]

Tacpot

I assume you are actually present when your AME does your medical, that he is capable of asking questions, and you are capable of replying?

I expect my GP or my AME to ask me about myself, my lifestyle etc and to advise me on the basis of my answers. These questions and my answers SHOULD be confidential between me and my physician.

My AME will issue a certificate if he is happy that I meet the CAA criteria. If he is not happy to issue the certificate then he may WITH MY CONSENT refer me to the CAA Medical Dept or a specialist.

Sorry, I don't believe your justification holds water.

I have no objection to the CAA gathering information for statistical puposes but the purpose should be made clear and the results subjected to proper statistical scrutiny and published. If they are not prepared to properly analyse and publish the results they should not IMHO be requiring the information to be provided.

Mike

[tacpot]

mrcross: being present and being asked suprisingly pertinent questions by the AME was exactly the process that caused me to realise that the AMEs are not just doctors authorised by the CAA to do medical exams, but people who understand the medical implications of flying and aviation.

Any verbal questions and answers are confidential between the doctor and yourself.

I see these written questions as just being introductory questions so the AME has a starting point for further questions.

[Mike Cross]

AFIK a copy of the form is returned to the CAA.

The original post related to questions being asked on the form which were not relevant to the medical assessment.

Don't know about the rest of you but I don't normally think it necessary to take my log book to a medical examination. Therefore in my case the answers to hours flown are guesswork.

As I have said, I have no objection to providing the information providing that it is being collected and used sensibly.

AME's are big boys, they don't need a questionnaire in order to start a conversation, hence my suggestion that tacpot's view that "These questions give the AME the background information they need to provide a full service to both yourself and the CAA." did not hold water.

The only reason that I can see for them being passed back to the CAA is for staistical purposes and if that is the case why not say so on the form?


Mike

[Zlin526]

Tmmorris,

At the risk of being accused of being a CAA spod, I really can't see what the problem is here. Its sort of like this:

If you want a CAA medical, there is a hoop......Jump through it by being relatively healthy & answering the questions on the form and you get your medical. Its quite simple really. I suppose you could always make up the answers.............

I have to fill in those forms every 6 months, and it pi$$es me off too, but its got to be done, or I'd be looking for another job.

Do you challenge the PPL examiner by questioning why he's asking you to perform a PFL for him? Or do you ask why those nasty Inland Revenue chaps ask you to fill in all those awkward questions on a tax return? Of course not.

Somebody has been paid an awful lot of money to set those questions, and almost certainly been promoted on the strength of his work!!!

TTFN

Zlin

[mad_jock]

From a class 2 medical point of view the information required is maybe stupid but its the same form which does class 1 and 2.

The information may be the method that the caa gathers statistics for whatever they do.

FAA make you answer similar questions but away from the medical.

I think its just a method of getting data about how much flying is actually getting done and by whom.

MJ