TERRI MCKINSEY // Flight Nurse

In the mid-1980s as an intensive care nurse at Georgia BaptistMedical Center in Atlanta, she would hear the rotors of thehospital's helicopter and get butterflies in her stomach. "I wasalways intrigued." In 1986, the center's Life Flight service added asecond aircraft, and the call for flight nurses went out. "I said,what the heck, and I applied and got it!" She said her background inICU work is what got her the job because most emergency air servicerequires that type of previous training or extensive emergency roomexperience. A registered nurse, she worked in ICU at a small areahospital before Georgia Baptist. The she was in the cardiac surgicalICU and cardiac trauma unit. In 1986, she trained in Life Flight forsix months, learning such things as altitude physiology and thephysical effects of gravitational force on the body. She met herhusband, Jim, at Georgia Baptist, where he was then a resident (nowhe is a vascular surgeon at the University of Chicago Hospitals).When he transferred to Chicago in 1992, she was able to land at theU. of C. Aeronautical Network. She currently is grounded because sheis expecting a daughter, Laura, this week. Waiting for . . .

Her job literally is waiting for an accident to happen. Orthere may be a transport of a patient from one place to another for avariety of reasons. "We're here waiting for a call from the state police or emergencymedical services, usually when there are multicasualties somewhere.We go ahead and lift off, even if we don't have an exact locationyet. We call it `scene response.' We lift off because every minutecounts." While en route, "We get as much information as we can, ifthere were cars, trucks, rollovers, fires. That way we can getthings ready, like burn sheets out ready to go, or pain medicationsor equipment for head injuries, airway problems, IV fluids" and soon. At the other end, she said police and other emergency agencyworkers have been trained by hospital pilots and staffers how toprepare for incoming helicopters, things like selecting the bestlanding site, usually marked by flares or sectioned off by policecars. "We're very quiet in the back, the pilot needs to be talkingto the ground or airport tower. Our job in the back is to look forother aircraft, we are the pilot's second and third sets of eyes."She said a normal flight consists of the pilot (most are Vietnamcombat veterans), a physician and a nurse. Another nurse may beadded. The helicopter (an American Eurocopter-Dauphin 2) can taketwo patients out from a casualty scene. "We can fly within about 200miles, but we can go farther." Depending if paramedics have already"appropriately packaged" an accident victim, the helicopter can be inand out in as little as four minutes. She's been on the ground forlonger than an hour for drivers in penned-in automobiles. No reservations

"I love flying, I love aviation. I don't have a pilot'slicense, but someday I will. My son, J. T. (2 1/2), loves thehelicopter. He sits in it, puts my helmet on and smiles. My husbandsays, `Where does he get that?' I think my husband gets a littlenervous sometimes (about her job). But I've never been in asituation where I was afraid."

This job is for "people with assertive personalities, people whoare independent. Floor nurses work very hard, but I couldn't take 15patients. I enjoy the autonomy."

BUT: "There is a waiting line to be a flight nurse. There is arunning joke . . . you have to take a contract out on a flight nurseto get to be one. Our crews' lowest years of nursing experience is10."