Is There A Doctor On The Plane?

It's an emergency – in the air!

These sorts of articles are always fun: light, descriptive, and we’ve almost all been there.

In particular, this article is great because it exposed me to a new word: “enplanements”! And, to use this new word in a sentence: During their study period, there were 39 in-flight medical events per every one million enplanements. Their cohort looked like this:

The most frequent instances for medical events were, by obvious nature, international and long-haul flights. The most frequent responder, when one was available, was a physician, at 20% of the time, followed by nurses at 8%, and then paramedics at 2%.

There are several mildly interesting tables describing, in excruciating detail, various descriptive characteristics of medical events. For example, the different types of treatments rendered:

I’m mildly perturbed there were so many unwell people – transported to hospital – where the medical kit wasn’t even opened.

Overall, just good, simple fun.