Emotions always fly along with you

The flight planning has been organised, the patient has been medically cleared for transport and the aircraft takes off for Poland with the medical team. Sounds like a perfectly normal operation, doesn't it?

Previously. Explosions, injured people. A hospital in ruins. Medical treatment is no longer guaranteed.

Today. On a humanitarian mission for a government client, a patient is flown for further emergency oncological treatment. The 12-yearold boy is not an isolated case. In recent months, patients – many of them children – have been transported several times for adequate treatment that was simply no longer able to be provided locally.

As it is not possible to fly to Ukraine, the patients are transported to airports in Poland or Moldova. Babies, infants, adolescents and adults. Responsive patients and intensive care patients. Accompanied or completely alone. Each and every one of them has a journey of suffering behind them and still has a long way to go. Then there is an unsuccessful mission, because help arrives too late and the little patient dies during the long journey from Ukraine to Poland to the rescue aeroplane.

We asked Intensive Care Paediatric Nurse Jakob S, who accompanied some of the flights, for their thoughts: “Of course, you're an expert in what you do and the medical procedures in the team are routine and wellrehearsed, but you're still always a human being. The background to the fates of the young patients, of course, also affects you. But the realisation that, as part of the movement, you have made a contribution to ensuring that the young people can ultimately receive better care gives you an incredible sense of satisfaction after every day of work.”

Dr Eva Wurz, Chief Medical Officer, added: “In general, Tyrol Air Ambulance only deploys experienced medics. They are also trained and practised in dealing with emotionally challenging situations. In addition, if the individual situation requires it, every team member at Tyrol Air Ambulance can seek easily accessible, independent and anonymous psychological help at any time. This naturally applies to the entire workforce in the company, be it the staff in flight organisation, the cockpit crew of a flight, or the staff in our medical assistance business unit, who also come into direct contact with these realities.

“Tyrol Air Ambulance has been flying for the good of the people for almost 50 years. Our operations change the reality of patients and their families and, in this specific case, bring a ray of hope to an area in crisis.”