Page 52 - Signal Winter 2019

| EAS |
Big enough to carry a lot of people, fuel and equipment, but small enough to land just about anywhere. The 139 is in the Goldilocks zone of HEMS heli’s.
by day and night came within reach for No 3 and for the first time, we were able to pick up patients directly from Irish hospitals and fly them to the UK if that’s what their clinical needs dictated.
Big enough to carry a lot of people, fuel and equipment, but small enough to land just about anywhere. The 139 is in the Goldilocks zone of HEMS heli’s.
For EAS, it means that we can carry all the clinical equipment we might need (the boot is fairly full in addition to the cabin space) a full crew, patient, a family member or medical team and, critically, a full three hour fuel tank while still allowing an ample power margin. It’s a ‘smiles all around for everyone’ kind of helicopter and the more I fly it the more I like it. Cruising at 150kts, the 139 brings almost the entire country within range of a PCI lab in less than 90 minutes for STEMI calls and even the most remote areas are not much further away than that. I mentioned earlier that we ended up doing jobs on EAS that were very different than anyone initially expected. Some of those have been tasks that the 139 makes easy work of, while the EC135, as good a machine as it is, would definitely not have been able to carry out. People are alive who otherwise wouldn’t be purely because of the quality this machine brings to the service.
Stressors associated with EAS
On EAS, you are going to come across things that are outside the experience of most people and which can very easily be described as traumatic. For the most part, you will get used to it, to a point of being very blasé about other peoples’ problems, but the truth is, everyone is human and from time to time some crewmembers will need a bit of help. Presented by personnel from PSS, during this training, students are given a detailed brief on the kind of stress reactions that are common in this line of work and what help is available to them if they feel they need it. This help is offered anonymously and is as much a part of looking after your overall health as reporting sick with a physical injury. Also covered are Critical Incident Stress Debriefings. These are compulsory events whereby a crew is debriefed by PSS or a Unit facilitator after an incident that has been deemed serious
enough to warrant it. These are not common but can be initiated by the aircraft commander or another person higher up the chain of command if they feel it is warranted.
What are the stressors associated with EAS? I can see a few, both by looking at the data and from anecdotal experience:
1. Pilot Shortages It’s not controversial to say that at the moment we are low on people. In terms of pilots numbers – specifically we have about half of the authorised establishment figures and the authorised establishment – the amount of people we are allowed to have in the unit by law - does not account for EAS, as it was determined before EAS existed. The numbers are especially low at Capt/ Lt and Airman levels where the people leaving plus small class sizes during the recession have had a real detrimental impact in terms of numbers. In addition, and in contrast to previous times in my service, the P1 side of the roster is still largely populated by Comdts / Lt Cols. This means that we are often away from what is nominally our own primary, supervisory, role. This creates a conflict between what we are meant to be doing and our actual day to day activities which leads to frustration and potentially, a level of stress. Whereas in previous times a Comdt might expect to come off the roster to focus on their responsibilities in the Wing, that no longer automatically happens. The result is that the work associated with his actual appointment has to be done somewhere and that’s often on EAS duty, which should be admin free in an ideal world. The thing is, if these same guys stopped flying altogether, they’d probably be more stressed, so maybe this one cancels itself out to an extent.
2. EAS itself This is a multifaceted contributor to stress levels. People would assume it’s the contact with badly injured people that causes the stress. This not without warrant for some people, but in truth though, it’s not the blood dripping from the ceiling jobs (although you’ll get those ) that you generally remember and concern for the patient is usually overruled by self-preservation and concern for your crew. Acute stressors can exist here though. Everyone will have
52 | | WINTER ‘19 |