Flight Physician: Some Doctors Do Travel on Air Ambulances

Families will often ask to have a physician onboard an air ambulance flight. **Sometimes the attending physician or your own physician can accompany the patient. Otherwise, we can provide a physician to attend and care for your patient or family member on their flight.

The Qualifications of Flight Physicians

Physicians on medical flights have training in flight physiology. This is a course allowing them the proper information they need about pressure changes and other factors that affect the human body at high altitudes. Many are board certified in emergency room medicine and have extensive experience in intensive care unit care.

Often in critical care situations, a flight physician will go bedside to retreive the patient. This means that the medical personnel arrive at the departing city, take ground transportation to the hospital where the patient is located and make their way to where the patient is located. They then escort the patient or patients on an ambulance to the airport. This affords patients who are in critical condition constant supervision and a smoother transition from the hospital to the ground ambulance and air ambulance.