"The Deadly Cost of Swooping In to Save a Life"

[visibility3miles]

Disclaimer: I am not a helicopter pilot!!!
This was on the front page of Friday's Washington Post, so an attention grabber.

Fatal Flights
The cost of helicopter competition
Interactive: Fatal Crashes Since 1980
Fatal Flights: Fatal Medical Helicopter Crashes Since 1980 (washingtonpost.com) (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/nation/medical-helicopters/fatal-crashes.html)

FATAL FLIGHTS A Perilous Rush to Profit
The Deadly Cost of Swooping In to Save a Life

By Gilbert M. Gaul and Mary Pat Flaherty
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 21, 2009

SANTA ROSA BEACH, Fla. Shortly after midnight on a storm-swept October night in 2004, Tom Palcic, a medical helicopter pilot, started across Choctawatchee Bay to pick up a hospital patient and transport him to a facility 60 miles away.

Such flights are common in the highly competitive multibillion-dollar air-medical business. Although the public profile of medical helicopters has them swooping to crash scenes at the edge of highways, most flights, like Palcic's, involve shuttling patients between hospitals.

The director of the helicopter program for which Palcic flew called these lucrative patients "golden trout" and pushed pilots to reel in as many as possible. When pilots balked at flying in bad weather, he called them sissies and second-guessed them, records and interviews show.

Palcic, 63, was just two minutes into the flight of AIRHeart-1 when his crew radioed a dispatcher that he was turning back because of the thunder and lightning.

Moments later, Palcic's helicopter banked in clouds and plunged 700 feet into shallow waters, killing him, a flight nurse and a paramedic. A woman who lived nearby recalled that the vibration shook candlesticks out of their holders...

What began almost four decades ago as a way to save lives is now one of the most dangerous jobs in America -- deadlier than logging, mining or police work -- with 113 deaths for every 100,000 employees, The Post found. Only working on a fishing boat is riskier. The rate for airline pilots is 80.1...

washingtonpost.com (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/20/AR2009082004500.html)

[jonwilson]

Unfortunately this is the grim reality of EMS operations that are profit making and not government or charity funded.
The commercial pressure to 'do that tasking' must sometimes be immense.

EMS in the UK is charity funded and therefore the commercial pressures are not there. Although it's a small country the accident rate is almost non existent.

It's the commercial pressure's that can make any operation dangerous whether it be rotary or fixed wing.

[SASless]

That is symptomatic of the American Helicopter EMS Industry where some operators and hospital administrators don't get enough broken noses!:mad:

After a hard "Five of Clubs" smack on some jerk's "Snot Locker".....he would soon figure out who the "Sissy" was!:ok:

[TorqueOfTheDevil]

EMS in the UK is charity funded and therefore the commercial pressures are not there. Although it's a small country the accident rate is almost non existent.


True, but the pressure to keep the charity money coming in causes other problems, such as unrealistic desire to attend every possible incident, even in difficult terrain, and then extreme reluctance to admit defeat and let a more suitable asset (eg a SAR helicopter) take over. This attitude doesn't result in crashes but it does mean that a lot of casualties experience a great deal of unnecessary discomfort and delay in getting to a hospital!

[Helibloke]

It's up to the pilot to say no, commercial pressure is a bugger but as a pilot you need to be able to stand up to the Ops manager/Boss if they are trying to push you into flying in a dodgy situation.

[helmet fire]

With you helibloke! Every pilot and aircrewman wants to fly - they all want to say yes....it is trying to find the ones prepared to say "no" that is a challenge.

Torque: I hope that is a gee-up. The attitude you speak of is a human nature issue, and to confine it to charity operations is either a gee-up fishing expedition, or borne of frustration from a particular scenario from where ever you work. Either way: to colour charities world wide with that kind of statement is an insult that is not fact supportable.

..........or did I take the bait??:sad:

[Red Wine]

Select your pilots carefully.
Give your pilots thorough training.
Give your pilots supporting SMS / SOP’s.
Give your pilots Instrument Aircraft.
Give your pilots the comfort and support to say: “Not Tonight Thanks”

And your pilots will give you a safe operation.

[handbag]

A friend of mine recently told the CP that he wasn't going to accept the mission as he didn't like the weather. " We don't do that here " was the reply.

[TorqueOfTheDevil]

Helmet Fire,

I didn't mean to tar charities worldwide with the same brush - my comments were solely concerning certain (not all) air ambulance operators in the UK whose priorities, at times, are rather suspect. I have dozens of examples to bore you with should you wish!

TOTD

[jolly girl]

From the latest issue of Human Factors:

Objective: The presence of social psychological pressures on pilot decision making was assessed using qualitative analyses of critical incident interviews. Background: Social psychological phenomena have long been known to influence attitudes and behavior but have not been highlighted in accident investigation models. Method: Using a critical incident method, 28 pilots who flew in Alaska were interviewed. The participants were asked to describe a situation involving weather when they were pilot in command and found their skills challenged. They were asked to describe the incident in detail but were not explicitly asked to identify social pressures. Pressures were extracted from transcripts in a bottom-up manner and then clustered into themes. Results: Of the 28 pilots, 16 described social psychological pressures on their decision making, specifically, informational social influence, the foot-in-the-door persuasion technique, normalization of deviance, and impression management and self-consistency motives.
(Paletz, Bearman, Orasnu & Holbrook)

[spinwing]

Mmmmm ....

Jolly Girl ....

All of which means WHAT? (Answer preferred in PLAIN English please).


:E

[darrenphughes]

It looks like pretty plain language to me Spinwing. Maybe you should try broadening your vocabulary!

:E

[SASless]

Madame Jolly merely used a scientific method to verify what we already know. The Boss Fellah expects you to get out and fly to generate the revenue and will exert pressure on you to do so, along with customers, tea room commandoes, and one's own poor thinking.

[spinwing]

Mmmmm ....

Arrrr ..... yes plain language .... of course .... how linguistically challenged of me not to realise.

Thanks Darren


:E

[darrenphughes]

No Problem.:ok:

[B Sousa]

Sasless has not lost his spirit for sure......

I have been fortunate in EMS. I work for a company that has never challenged my opinion when I have said no to a flight. We do have procedures set down for when one is refused, such as printing out the local weather etc, but irregardless I have never seen management bat an eye.

( Come on out to the Colorado River)

[jolly girl]

Dearest SAS,
This is not my work, but thank you for the compliment!

Spinwing,
From the same citation:

Informational social influence is defined as “an influence to accept information obtained from another as evidence about reality” (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955, p. 629; italics in original).

The foot-in-the-door technique is a method for obtaining compliance from another person: If a person has already agreed to a small request, that person is more likely to agree to a large one later, given a relatively short delay between requests (Freedman & Fraser, 1966).

The normalization of deviance is an incremental acceptance of a progressively lower level of safety by a group of people (Vaughan, 1996).

Self-Motives: Impression Management and Self-Consistency:
Simply put, most people in most situations do not like to look bad to themselves or to others. Many individuals are also motivated to act in ways consistent with their beliefs... (Aronson, Cohen & Nail, 1999; Steele, 1988; Beauregard & Dunning, 1998; Higgins, 1987; Swann, 1983).

J.

[Gomer Pylot]

My only pressures are self-imposed. My weather decisions have never been questioned here, and I don't print out the weather or do anything else if I decline a flight. The comm center may ask where the weather is, to document it for the weather turndown website, but that's the extent of it. It was not uncommon to be questioned by managers in the Gulf of Mexico, but I've never been questioned in my current job. The day I am is the day I look for another job. The weather minima are the highest I've ever flown to, anywhere, and far higher than what I'm used to, so I don't expect any problems.

[Torquetalk]

The push to fly doesn't just come from management: macho attitudes and get-there-itis by pilots play a role too.

Turned down a flight recently due to a defect on the aircraft (dodgy tachometer) only to have a colleague come in on his day off and fly in flip-flops just to show how unimportant this defect was :rolleyes:

TT

[TukTuk BoomBoom]

well apart from the pressure and all the risk you guys are talking about dont forget the crew and the patient. Its not just your lives we are talking about.
If you bother to read the accident reports there are a whle lot of victims who never got a chance to voice their opinion of the risk.
Too many gung-ho pilots no matter how you spin it or what flowery language you use.
Boo hoo my boss pressured me to fly, i had poor training.....etc etc
Getting really sick of all the excuses in EMS as to why all on board were killed while flying at night in fog, at night low over a river, without a rad-alt, in marginal weather....
If you read the reports its just poor airmanship 80% of the time.
I feel bad for the paramedics and guys in the back.

[DOUBLE BOGEY]

SASless,

Is the term "SNOT LOCKER" a medical reference????? Made me laugh for at least 3 minutes!!!

Makes me wonder what a "CHOCOLATE BOX" really is now!!!