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What happens when you are the doctor on the airplane?

cockeyed.com

11–20 of 201 posts

Re: What happens when you are the doctor on the airplane?

#12
I can't find it now, but my favourite 'doctor on a plane' story was from an anesthesiologist who struggles to sleep on a plane, so on a long haul flight took something to help him doze off. He woke up to the 'is there a doctor on the plane?' call, and called the flight attendant over. It turned out that he was the person that they wanted to attend to, they were concerned since he was passed out and drooling on the passenger next to him.

Re: What happens when you are the doctor on the airplane?

#13
post #4

If you are interested in medical "hacks" on long-distance flights, the award has to go to two doctors who were on a 1995 British Airways flight from Hong Kong to London when a patient had trouble breathing. They determined that the patient suffered a collapsed lung, so they made an incision in her chest, and used a coat hanger, brandy, and a tube from a medical kit to drain the lung. As I recall the story, there was…

    intense bladder pains mid-flight which turned out to be
    the result of downing a huge quantity of beer before the 
    flight and being unable to urinate
was that due to the altitude or something else?

Re: What happens when you are the doctor on the airplane?

#14
post #4

If you are interested in medical "hacks" on long-distance flights, the award has to go to two doctors who were on a 1995 British Airways flight from Hong Kong to London when a patient had trouble breathing. They determined that the patient suffered a collapsed lung, so they made an incision in her chest, and used a coat hanger, brandy, and a tube from a medical kit to drain the lung. As I recall the story, there was…

intense bladder pains mid-flight which turned out to be the result of downing a huge quantity of beer before the flight and being unable to urinate was that due to the altitude or something else?

The stricken passenger had the option of using the restroom, but for unknown reasons could not urinate. They stretched him out on a row of seats which seemed to help the pain, but from what I recall was unable to go until they reached the destination airport. The total trip time was about three hours.

Re: What happens when you are the doctor on the airplane?

#16
The medical director of my paramedic program used to work for a hospital that provided medical control for a number of major airlines (generally speaking, even when they ask for a physician on a plane, they're also calling the airline's 'on call' doctor as well).

His scariest stories weren't due to the criticality of the patient, but rather the incompetence of the provider on board the plane (to the point that he, on several different occasions, had to instruct the flight crew to 'please keep him away from the patient for the rest of the flight'). Just because someone is a 'doctor' doesn't necessarily mean they're well equipped to handle a medical emergency (note: the physician interviewed here managed the patient perfectly appropriately).

It's possible he was just pandering to the room of soon-to-be paramedics at the time, but he said he generally instructed the flight crew to ask for a paramedic before a physician, simply because they're generally more comfortable working in the 'austere' medical setting found on a plane.

Re: What happens when you are the doctor on the airplane?

#17
post #7

Unreadable on mobile (pre text or something preventing reflow). And no byline or date, so completely useless. Fuck off basically.

iPhone? Hit the 'Reader' button in the URL bar. Anything else? Get the Readability or 'Instapaper Text' bookmarklet installed.

Then quit posting your personal problems here.

Re: What happens when you are the doctor on the airplane?

#18
post #7

Unreadable on mobile (pre text or something preventing reflow). And no byline or date, so completely useless. Fuck off basically.

Fuck off? There's no need to be so rude.

In the future, use ihackernews.com. It provides a mobile friendly link to stories using viewtext.org. The viewtext.org link for this story (http://viewtext.org/article?url=http://www.cockeyed.com/pers...) works perfectly on my phone.

Re: What happens when you are the doctor on the airplane?

#20
post #7

Unreadable on mobile (pre text or something preventing reflow). And no byline or date, so completely useless. Fuck off basically.

iPhone? Hit the 'Reader' button in the URL bar. Anything else? Get the Readability or 'Instapaper Text' bookmarklet installed. Then quit posting your personal problems here.

Article looks just fine on iOS, no Reader necessary.
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