Reservations

Luxury Travel

Reservations

Luxury Travel

A day in the life of a doctor flying with Midlands Air Ambulance

A day in the life of

Dr Richard Fawcett, a specialist in emergency medicine and pre-hospital care who flies life-saving missions with Midlands Air Ambulance.

This is a feature from Issue 8 of Charitable Traveller. Click to read more from this issue.

“I started flying for Midlands Air Ambulance in 2012, alongside my job as an A&E Consultant at the Royal Stoke University Hospital, one of the UK’s biggest and busiest major trauma hospitals.

I’m also in the Army Reserves and I’ve done three tours of Afghanistan. On the last tour, I was in a team flying out to battlefields on a Chinook helicopter to take wounded soldiers to a trauma hospital – that was good training!

A typical day...

“starts at 7 am and the shift is 12 hours. The team consists of a pilot, an A&E doctor and a critical care paramedic. We check our kit is in good order and we’re stocked with drugs and get a brief from the pilot on the weather. If we don’t need to leave we do some simulations to prep, catch up on paperwork, or review cases to see if we can learn anything. A typical shift has one to four jobs taking one to five hours.

we deal with...

“major incidents like a terrorist attack, fire, or building collapse, and individual incidents like knife crime, road traffic accidents, and cardiac arrests. We help paramedics with any complex case. The area we cover is huge and we could be landing on the M6 or on a mountain.

the hardest thing...

“is when no matter how hard you try and how well you work as a team, you just can’t save someone. Having to face the family and tell them that is difficult. But when we do save someone it’s incredibly rewarding. Most of the fundraisers we meet are ex-patients or close to one.

I can honestly say...

“The team makes a real difference, not only in life and death situations but also by reducing suffering and improving recovery and quality of life. We take A&E to the patient, very quickly to start damage control or resuscitation at the earliest possible moment and optimise patient care and survivability. We can deliver more advanced drugs and painkillers, put patients in medically induced comas, and perform life-saving surgery. It can be the difference between someone walking out of a hospital or going into care.”

DID YOU KNOW

Midlands Air Ambulance gets no government funding and is solely reliant on donations. Each life-saving mission costs about £2,5000, so every penny counts.

This is a feature from Issue 8 of Charitable Traveller. Click to read more from this issue.