What it takes – Arnhem Land Medevac
Have you ever had a time when you were sick, I mean really sick?
When you needed someone else to take charge, a doctor to be called, an ambulance to be dispatched.
How grateful did you feel when gentle hands supported you and experienced experts took care…eased the pain.
When you live in an isolated place that kind of help can be a long way away…That’s where we shine! That’s where we are the hands and feet of Jesus.
There is a lot of dedication, commitment and hard work on the way to becoming a MAF pilot. Jacophin Singh recently found this out first hand.
Jacophin is being inducted into the Arnhem Land programme, her first MAF placement. Induction training is hard work. All the flight training has been completed and now it’s time to put everything learned into practice in a remote place, with new people. It is an opportunity to develop and apply many new skills apart from simply flying the aircraft! It’s a steep learning curve. Jacophin Singh, MAFI’s first female Indian pilot, was working her way through LOFT (Line Oriented Flight Training) towards her first MAF solo operation with Arnhem Land Chief Pilot, Lisa Curran.
This day seemed to be the day when everything briefed and discussed was suddenly required to be put into practice!
Jacophin and Lisa had spent the morning at a remote community after transporting a medical clinic team enabling them to carry out essential ongoing medical management of several patients and unexpected medical interventions. (maybe that’s why the clinic teams always carry so much equipment – they never know what they are going to see!)
Waiting for the clinic to finish and while sitting under the shade of the wing where it’s still 35 degrees Celsius with no breeze to ease the heat and humidity, Jacophin and Lisa take the opportunity to discuss various issues. Amongst other things, they discuss and review the new MAF patient restraint harness system (a new system that has recently been upgraded enabling quick installation even if a pilot is new to the system), MAF’s approvals from the National Aviation Authority to carry Dangerous goods specifically targeting requirements of medical oxygen as freight, the paperwork (there is always paperwork!) and the practicalities surrounding such an operation.
Shortly after return to Gove Base, planning for the next flight was interrupted as they were re-tasked with an urgent medical retrieval from a remote community some 120km away. For MAF this journey will be a 35 minute flight. The alternative is a 3 ½ hour drive over rough rutted, potholed bush tracks each way for the medical team and the desperately ill patient.
Jacophin and Lisa departed with two medical experts, the patient restraint harness system and portable oxygen as freight (paperwork complete!).
On arrival, the medical team were driven 3 minutes to the patient, the old man was critically ill and unable to walk and in desperate need of gentle hands and expert help, the worried relatives standing by.
While the Medical team assessed the patient, the MAF flight crew reconfigured the aircraft, the patient restraint harness system fitted in double quick time, planned the departure just as the old 4wheel drive and most of the community arrived at the airstrip with the old man who was transferred by willing hands to the waiting aircraft. After a short prayer, they departed to Gove base 15 km from the hospital.
It’s a tale that is told over and over. It is a part of what we do as MAF. What you don’t see when everything runs smoothly is the technical expertise, the briefing, the training, the planning and contingency planning, the consideration of many variables! It’s a day where it all coincided, a day guaranteed to be etched into the memory for pilot and patient.