Medical kit on planes

[Mr MXT]

Very proud of my OH who's a doctor - I always like to raise hypothetical situations where she saves the day. 'What would you do if....' mostly because it impresses me no end and also a bit of what my role would be and how I could help.

We were chatting about having to do an emergency tracheostomy on a flight, and I was wondering what medical kit is actually available on an aircraft?

[Riley Blue]

Coincidentally, someone asked much the same last week:

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

[kurt535]

Not much from my experiences with a passenger who had a confirmed heart attack (post event). Surprised me as I was flying BA when the incident occurred and had expected decent medical bag but one never materialised.

I asked the stewardess for oxygen cylinder, asprin / GTN spray and she looked at me like a goldfish before announcing the cabin crew would take over from me. They then proceeded to barge me out the way and try to lift the poor gentleman up who continued to suffer severe pain before I sadly had to shout at them to put him down otherwise they were going to kill him. In the end i gave him asprin I carried and got the pilot to declare a Pan and pronto his descent into Dubai.

Bloke lived and I sent a letter to BA outlining how crap their cabin crew were in the incident to be told in a reply how well trained they were...........

So, expect no tools or help for the job in hand other than what you carry.

[pushthebutton]

kurt535 said:

Not much from my experiences with a passenger who had a confirmed heart attack (post event). Surprised me as I was flying BA when the incident occurred and had expected decent medical bag but one never materialised.

I asked the stewardess for oxygen cylinder, asprin / GTN spray and she looked at me like a goldfish before announcing the cabin crew would take over from me. They then proceeded to barge me out the way and try to lift the poor gentleman up who continued to suffer severe pain before I sadly had to shout at them to put him down otherwise they were going to kill him. In the end i gave him asprin I carried and got the pilot to declare a Pan and pronto his descent into Dubai.

Bloke lived and I sent a letter to BA outlining how crap their cabin crew were in the incident to be told in a reply how well trained they were...........

So, expect no tools or help for the job in hand other than what you carry.

The medical kit contains all of those things. The response you've described isn't what's trained.

The pilots declared the PAN acting on the information available to them: you didn't get them to declare a pan

This is what EASA recommends:

https://www.easa.europa.eu/system/files/dfu/certif...

Edited by pushthebutton on Sunday 2nd July 23:37

[kurt535]

pushthebutton said:

kurt535 said:

Not much from my experiences with a passenger who had a confirmed heart attack (post event). Surprised me as I was flying BA when the incident occurred and had expected decent medical bag but one never materialised.

I asked the stewardess for oxygen cylinder, asprin / GTN spray and she looked at me like a goldfish before announcing the cabin crew would take over from me. They then proceeded to barge me out the way and try to lift the poor gentleman up who continued to suffer severe pain before I sadly had to shout at them to put him down otherwise they were going to kill him. In the end i gave him asprin I carried and got the pilot to declare a Pan and pronto his descent into Dubai.

Bloke lived and I sent a letter to BA outlining how crap their cabin crew were in the incident to be told in a reply how well trained they were...........

So, expect no tools or help for the job in hand other than what you carry.

The medical kit contains all of those things. The response you've described isn't what's trained.

The pilots declared the PAN acting on the information available to them: you didn't get them to declare a pan

This is what EASA recommends:

https://www.easa.europa.eu/system/files/dfu/certif...

Edited by pushthebutton on Sunday 2nd July 23:37

- of course its not what is trained. the cabin crew clearly dropped a bk on the flight. trying to drag a heart attack casualty to their feet was incredibly dumb.
- flights such as Dubai should indeed have had all the goodies (inc a defib in many cases) I needed but again, cabin crew dropped a bk not digging them out
- quite right capt declared the pan, but i do recall suggesting he declared a pan and he agreed having spoken to me as i was working with the casualty.

[Blaster72]

Hmm, ok.


Anyway, here's the kit BA carry along with a defib. Will open as a pdf

https://www.britishairways.com/health/docs/during/...

[pushthebutton]

Hopefully, next time, you'll know you can expect more tools than just the ones you're carrying.

Your story is the exception rather than the rule. The training and implementation is, almost always, top notch and saves many lives in conjunction with Medlink and utilising the help of any travelling Doctors.

In recent memory, the last couple of Doctors to have used the EpiPen have injected themselves rather than the intended patient; dropped a bk?; incredibly dumb?; or, hopefully, isolated and not indicative of the wider medical profession.

[Blaster72]

kurt535 said:

- of course its not what is trained. the cabin crew clearly dropped a bk on the flight. trying to drag a heart attack casualty to their feet was incredibly dumb.

I thought you said the heart attack was only diagnosed later.

[surveyor]

I'm told that Virgin use some sort of headset also with video cam, which Cabin Crew can put on to receive help back from their remote medical service.

[kurt535]

Blaster72 said:

kurt535 said:

- of course its not what is trained. the cabin crew clearly dropped a bk on the flight. trying to drag a heart attack casualty to their feet was incredibly dumb.

I thought you said the heart attack was only diagnosed later.

I was a qualified cascare medic in SAR at the time so was trained to identify a person's illness via a system we used called big sick/little sick. As such,I always carried a set of cards on me. Therefore i knew what was wrong the person and relayed all the appropriate info to the Capt so he could forward on to the 'comms-medic'. They agreed with my diagnosis but it was only post event I had it officially confirmed.

[Blaster72]

Good stuff thanks Kurt.

[48k]

Curious as to why the crew would declare pan-pan - an "emergency with no immediate threat to life" - instead of a mayday for a suspected heart attack ?

[djc206]

48k said:

Curious as to why the crew would declare pan-pan - an "emergency with no immediate threat to life" - instead of a mayday for a suspected heart attack ?

Pan is usually sufficient. Pan indicates a state of urgency which affords the aircraft priority over all but emergency aircraft. They're still going to be going direct as possible to wherever they want to be as fast as they want.

If memory serves I've only ever worked one medical mayday, I won't post the details on here but it was a very serious issue. I've no idea of the outcome but the pilots did everything they could (as did we) to get the individual on the ground asap.

[5150]

48k said:

Curious as to why the crew would declare pan-pan - an "emergency with no immediate threat to life" - instead of a mayday for a suspected heart attack ?

You wouldn't really declare a Mayday for a sick passenger. Mayday really refers to the whole aircraft being in danger (fire, critically low fuel, control problem . . the list is long), whereas a PAN is an Urgency call. I've had numerous cases of sick passengers on board, and in every case, there's no need to declare either - generally Air Traffic Control understand the nature of the issue having conveyed it through plain English, but there are certain cases where you need to formalise an issue through a Mayday or PAN call. . . .

[48k]

Thanks for the explanations chaps.