DENVER — We get to know more about the unique working environment on a Flight for Life helicopter from Chief Flight Nurse Teresa Elder
Q. What kind of training do you need to be a Flight for Life nurse?
A. All of our nurses are required to have at least 5 years experience as a critical care nurse. After that the rest of the training is on the job.
Q. How many fights do you do within a month or so?
A. It’s variable based on the season, but we average about 150 helicopter flights per month. People don’t realize that we also use airplanes to transport patients and mobilized ambulance transports.
Q. Where is the riskiest place to fly?
A. The most challenging place for our pilots to fly and land is the back country. Landing at 13,000 feet, it’s always windy up there along the mountain ridges. We fly aircraft specifically built for high altitude operations and all of our pilots have hundreds of hours of mountain flying experience.
Q. What kinds of treatments can you perform on flight?
A. The whole concept of Flight for life is to bring critical care medical attention right to the patient rather than waiting for them to get to the hospital. So even though we fly in a small helicopter we carry what you’d find in an emergency room.
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