Class One Medical.
For those, as I was, familiar with renewing a Class one medical in the UK here in China there is a slightly different system. Predominately because there are no such things as GP AMEs.
The first thing you do is go to one of the nominated hospitals for an all round check accompanied by an interpreter. Chinese hospitals all have one thing in common. They are spartan, normally with zero English and in the middle of some major refurbishment programme.
The first thing you do is pay the bill. RMB 185, just over £14, then off to the Matrons office, (they still have them) where she puts your details into a computer and it prints out a load of little stickers with your name and a bar code. You given an empty stamp sheet and off you go. Each check has it own department so you are travelling up and down and all over. There is no privacy in any of the checks so when you have your chest X ray there are a load of faces pressed up against the office window looking at the screen to see what the inside of a foreigner looks like. You do the whole gambit. Chest X ray, ECG relaxed and on the treadmill , echogram of you nether regions, urine, two blood samples, a general poke about and the hearing test. On my last hearing check they did make allowances for the rock drill demolishing a wall behind me. Every time you complete a stage they take one of your stickers, read it on their computer, stick it in your stamp book and chop it. When all is done you take it back to Matron whose computer then checks that you stamp sheet is kosher. Three days later you pick up the paperwork.
In China all aviation related medical work is done in the various CAAC hospitals scattered around the country. This includes any operations that may affect your licence. (Sounds a bit like HM Forces several years ago). For big organisations like Air China, China Southern etc, the medics go to their units to do them en masse but for us it’s a two hour ride to Guangzhou, normally on a Tuesday, which is the examiners at-home day. Our company doctor accompanies us, a pleasant lady in her thirties and also our previous, now retired, doctor for reasons that will be revealed.
On arrival at the hospital there are similar arrival formalities and as it is now all on one floor you all wait in one waiting area. Tuesday is aircrew wannabes day so you sit there surrounded by a dozen or so absolutely gorgeous Chinese wannabe air hostesses all desperate to practise their English on you. Your turn comes and they call you in.
The first thing they do is check your blood pressure.
Then they put you in the corner behind a curtain and fifteen minutes later they try it again.
The rest is fairly routine except the eyesight test. No charts that you can memorise, they have a fiendish machine that is unfoolable. There is a screen that shows something similar to the male sex symbol that points in eight segments at random. You have to stand there waving your arms in the right direction as it gets smaller and smaller. This is done from five metres and as the Chinese are naturally short sighted its sad to see some young wannabe struggling to see something which is blindingly obvious to you. The same rules for the first medical as the RAF maybe still has, if you need glasses, tough. After you have stumbled your way through the clouds of cigarette smoke at the ENT department you have finished. The CAAC examiners and your doctors(s) then go through the results behind closed doors. (This is where the old boy is useful, he has known us for years.) After that then comes the whole point of the expedition.
LUNCH!!!!!!!!
The doctors know where to go. A gigantic palace with a multitude of tanks shimmering with every fish or shellfish known to man. Prawns, crabs, lobster, oysters, scallops, who cares, the company is paying, all washed down with several bottles of Tsing Tao. Then you are poured, stuffed, bloated and eyes dot-crossing into the bus and two hours later you wake up outside the heliport. Three weeks later this is what you get.
The names and DoB have been withheld to shield the guilty.
I have to suffer this every six months.
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then you can get a good deal. My class 1 inital was £302, but subsequently £35 and £80 (which by all accounts would have cost £172 at Gatwick).
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