Flight Nurse

Okay guys, today we’re going to talk about what it’s like to be a flight nurse and all of the nuances and what you need to do into prepare for that. So if you decide that, Hey, I really want to be a flight nurse, well how do we go about doing that? So let’s take a look. The first thing we want to look at is what a flight nurse actually does. Well, they’re an ICU or ed nurse and they transport patients to levels of higher levels of care, usually like trauma centers or um, already hospitals. And they do this with a helicopter. These patients are usually very critical or they’re injured. So sometimes these are babies. And then sometimes these are adults. There are some times our geriatric patients, a very common injury is like motor vehicle accidents or motor vehicle collisions. Sometimes a motorcycle collisions any sort of trauma.

What happens is these transport services will actually go to the location of the injury or trauma or illness and they’ll pick these patients up and transport them to them, to the hospital. So what does a flight nurse actually have to do? Like what are the things that are really important for our nurse? Well, first off, they have to have extensive education and background. And we’ll get into the nuances of that in just a minute. But first, the other thing you have to look at is what, what they actually do inside the helicopter. They’re responsible for taking care of these really, really sick patients. And so they have to have excellent critical thinking and technical skills. So if this is something that you Excel at, then, by all means, this may be the right career path for you. The other thing that’s really important about flight nurses is they have to be poised in these high stress situations.

These situations are very much, I think on your feet. You have to react quickly. You have to make sure that you’re prepared to be able to answer questions that, uh, that come with being an experienced nurse. You’re not going to have a provider there to give you answers. You’re not going to have, uh, you may have very few team members there to help you. Usually, there are only about three people, on the actual aircraft. So you have to be able to talk to those people as a resource. But that’s about all you get. So what kind of background in education do you need to be a flight nurse? Well, first off, typically employers are going to want to BSN. It’s not that associate’s prepared nurses can’t do the job, but typically it is a preferred degree over associates. Uh, there’s a lot more that goes into the education and there are a lot more pathways in terms of advancing of chains.

Uh, so if this is something that you really want to go into a consider highly considered BSN programs over ADM programs if you can. The next thing is to consider that also, once you’re done, you have to be licensed in the state. You can pass in, collects, you gotta do your due diligence, become a registered nurse. You have to have that unencumbered license. That’s so important. Next, you have to have three to five years of ICU or ed experience. This is where those critical thinking skills come into play. And also the D clinical decision-making skills and also just little literally skills and that, that ability to deal with very, very sick patients. So that’s a really important factor here. Next, you got to have multiple levels of life support training. What this means is you need things like BLS. You need to be Biola certified, you have to be a CLS certified, you have to be pals certified, um, BLS as your basic life support.

ACLs is, that’s your critical care palaces for pediatric patients in the critical care area. Then you also have another one called P, H, T, L, S, which is the national association of emergency medical technicians. Prehospital trauma life support. So this focus is very specifically on being prepared for patients that are very sick coming into the hospital. Maybe they’re in the middle of the flight in and they’re actually coding. This is where this certification comes into play. Others also, there’s another certification called ITLs, which is international trauma life support. So it’s kind of on an international level. The other thing is every state is going to be a little bit different. In Texas. Texas actually requires that all flight nurses are EMT certified. But you may also need to be TNCC certified. You also sometimes need an additional certification like CCRN critical care registered nurse or the one for the emergency room, which is a certified emergency nurse.

You may also have additional state requirements and certifications, but they really depend on the state you live in. It depends on the employer that you’re going for. So if you’re going to start looking into these areas, there are you need to look at basically what you want to look at as you want to look at what school you’re going to, uh, make sure you get the experience, make sure you have all these areas of life supports and also those additional state certifications. So what are the main roles and responsibilities of that? A flight nurse? Well, their main goal is they want to focus on high levels of care. And these are for these high acuity patients, acuity being, uh, you know, how sick they are, these patients are extremely sick. So whether it’s from trauma, whether it’s from an illness, whether it’s a baby, whether it’s anywhere in the lifespan, this is, we want to get that patient the highest level of care, the quickest.

It may be a three hour drive to the hospital, but it may be a, you know, 40-minute helicopter ride. So this is why, the flight nurse is so very important. So the first thing that they do is they’re going to provide that level of safety and security to patients. They’re going to get the patient, stable as much as they can. They’re going to get them secured in the, uh, in the aircraft and then they’re going to get them transported. The other thing that the flight nurse does is they coordinate care with hospitals. And this is also going to be providers. They’re also going to be coordinating care, uh, with our colleagues inside, inside the aircraft. And, and one of the really important factor of this is you have to have, uh, uh, the great ability to communicate effectively.

You have to be very efficient. You have to be succinct, you have to basically be on par with your, with your communication and how you talk to, uh, whether it’s the pilot, whether it’s you’re calling on the, on the aircraft, whether it’s the provider coming in. You have to have to be apprised of all of the lingo and the terminology. So it’s really important that you communicate effectively with those people. What other responsibilities are there for a flight nurse? Well, they also manage the equipment. This goes to like restocking. So I actually have a friend, a good friend who was an ICU nurse with me at the hospital I worked at and she became a flight nurse. And she told me she started telling me about all of the other things that she does besides taking care of patients. And that’s managing equipment.

So this is like restocking the aircraft. Whenever, uh, you know, you ought to call and you take care of your patient and you get back to base and what happens? Do you have to refer to restock? You have to make sure that all the meds are there. You have to make sure everything’s, uh, not expired. You have to make sure that, that, that is a really, really important factor. Um, you want to also help the pilots and, uh, your colleagues maintain the safety of the aircraft. So you have to do checks. You have to do. Um, there’s all sorts of checks and checklists and maintenance that goes into that, that the nurse will be responsible for to a degree. The other important thing is this idea of continual education. This is not just a minimal medic, uh, a minimal level of education that like the state requires. 

This is something that’s very important. Many of the employers for all of these aircraft services in this life, These lifesaving services, they really focus on this idea of continuing education. So a lot of them will actually build in like stipends. And, benefits for people or for the employees, especially the nurses, to get that CE stay on top of, that your certifications like ALS and pals and BLS and also some of them will, will say, Hey, you need to be, if like if you’re not CCRN certified, they’ll say, Hey, look, you need to be CCR and certified within six months we’ll pay for it. So a lot of times there’s incentives to help you be better prepared for taking care of those patients. So let’s recap. When you are looking at the career path of a flight nurse, the first thing you will look at us background, you want to make sure that you’re prepared with your degree, whichever when you go into knowing that there may be a limitation, if you decide with an associates, associates degrees or great degrees, BSN degrees will typically give you the option to uh, Excel a lot faster.

And some jobs are just going to require a BSN. So if a flight nurse is what you want to do, make sure that you choose a program. If you can, it’s going to help you, uh, Excel without having those delays. Um, you’re also going to be, be responsible for having those multiple, multiple certifications. So these BLS ACLs. Do you have state requirements? So those are really important. Next on this is your experience. You want those three to five years of ICU or ed experience. This is where skills come into play. This is your critical thinking, your clinical decision making, your communication skills. This is where all those skills get really honed in. Remember the main responsibilities of that flight nurse are the primary in flight critical care nurse. They are going to be the ones providing care to those patients and they’re going to be kind of that life. I’m at an initial lifeline. Also. Remember you also have other duties that you’ll be responsible for. So this is communication with other providers, with colleagues. You’ve got aircraft maintenance, you’ve got restocking, and you have that aspect of continual education. I hope that this lesson has been extremely insightful into making sure that if this being a flight nurse as the career path that you want, that it’s going to help to guide you in making the decisions along the way. And now, like we always say, go out and be around cells and as always, happy nursing.