Saturday, February 25, 2006
Helicopters are Cool
So I had a pretty cool experience today. I was getting ready to go skiing and I a saw the distinctive green helicopter that belongs to AIRLIFE I saw them come into the hospital that is right next my house and decided this might be a good opportunity to see these helicopters up close and decide if this is what I really want to do. So I hopped in my car and drove over to the hospital. I arrived while the helicopter was still spinning down and parked and watched for a while. A bunch of little kids came over and were interested in the chopper. The pilot was still there and having a great time giving tours of the chopper. I crossed the barrier and attempted some ineffectual conversation with the pilot. He basically confirmed all the research I had been doing about this career. I really wanted to talk to the flight nurses and pick their minds about what I should do from here, but they seemed pretty busy with the patient in the hospital. It was cool to see the chopper and find out a little more about being a flight nurse or a flight physician. I gleaned a little info and it was just cool to see the chopper. I'm still a little ambivalent but this seems pretty exciting to me.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Job Searching vs. Career Searching
For the last several months I have been both job searching and career searching. It may sound like the same thing but it's really not. Job searching involves looking in the classifieds and on cragslist and on websites for work that you can do to pay the exorbitant housing prices and the day to day living costs in a college town. Career searching involves more introspection (for some). Some people seem to just know how they want to spend the rest of their lives and they never think twice about it. Unfortunately, I am not one of those people. Career searching is trying to figure out that career that will bring me the most satisfaction and happiness in the long-run. Or is it in the long-run? Do you do what you love now and not worry about what your career might look like in the future? Or, do you plan ahead a little bit and sacrifice a little so that you might be more satisfied in the end?
I ran across an interesting niche job the other day. At a site called Flightweb I found out that there are actually career flight physicians. These are usually Emergency Physicians that fly on the helicopters and take charge of the patient on the scene. The reason this is a niche job is that there are very few crews that fly with a MD/RN, most crews fly with with an RN/Medic crew, and the reason seems to be that there isn't too much that a doctor could do that the less qualified crew could and that the MD/RN combo is more expensive to the bottom line. There are a few programs in the country though so it is possible, and I think once I have the experience and training of a doc, if I want to fly on the helicopters, they're sure as hell going to take a fully-trained and certified MD over a flight nurse. I guess I envision a typical week like the flight nurses I saw with the down time and the non-flying days spent in the ER helping the other docs. This would also give me the chance to become a disaster doc. There is a special emergency medical fellowship for people who want to help out with disasters. I figure if you have a ton of areomedical trauma experience and a disaster cert, you would get to do some fun stuff.
There is another way that I could combine flying and medicine. This involves being a doctor that flies around to rural areas and provides much-needed service to these areas. I think this would fulfill all the things that I really want in a job. My daily commute would be an hour or so in a plane and possibly more. I would get to practice good medicine and provide care to people who really need it, and I might get to feel like a hero when I transport the really sick patient to a hospital in my airplane (that's a little farfetched...I know). This would be a pretty good way to be. But I think this would be a pretty good business model too because there is a desperate need for rural doctors right now. CU med school is even adding more slots with the express purpose of filling them with new rural docs, so that might give me a cool angle.
Needless to say there are many ways that I can combine aviation and medicine. The more I think about it the more I really want to go to medical school. Tally-ho.
I ran across an interesting niche job the other day. At a site called Flightweb I found out that there are actually career flight physicians. These are usually Emergency Physicians that fly on the helicopters and take charge of the patient on the scene. The reason this is a niche job is that there are very few crews that fly with a MD/RN, most crews fly with with an RN/Medic crew, and the reason seems to be that there isn't too much that a doctor could do that the less qualified crew could and that the MD/RN combo is more expensive to the bottom line. There are a few programs in the country though so it is possible, and I think once I have the experience and training of a doc, if I want to fly on the helicopters, they're sure as hell going to take a fully-trained and certified MD over a flight nurse. I guess I envision a typical week like the flight nurses I saw with the down time and the non-flying days spent in the ER helping the other docs. This would also give me the chance to become a disaster doc. There is a special emergency medical fellowship for people who want to help out with disasters. I figure if you have a ton of areomedical trauma experience and a disaster cert, you would get to do some fun stuff.
There is another way that I could combine flying and medicine. This involves being a doctor that flies around to rural areas and provides much-needed service to these areas. I think this would fulfill all the things that I really want in a job. My daily commute would be an hour or so in a plane and possibly more. I would get to practice good medicine and provide care to people who really need it, and I might get to feel like a hero when I transport the really sick patient to a hospital in my airplane (that's a little farfetched...I know). This would be a pretty good way to be. But I think this would be a pretty good business model too because there is a desperate need for rural doctors right now. CU med school is even adding more slots with the express purpose of filling them with new rural docs, so that might give me a cool angle.
Needless to say there are many ways that I can combine aviation and medicine. The more I think about it the more I really want to go to medical school. Tally-ho.
