#182 "do helicopters pilots ever have a conflict with the medical staff? "

Welcome to day 182, coffee with Kenny. And yeah, it's hot and muggy out here, so try to do this kind of quick. Saturday, my favorite day of the week. I have a question from the video, just from a couple days ago, day 178. How did I become an ELICOP? How did I become an EMS helicopter pilot? I just simply gave the example of how I did it and how you may do it. If that's your dream, that's your goal. There's a need for helicopter pilots. There's a need for EMS helicopter pilots. So many of you are going to be going this route, right? So here's a great question. Sorry, excuse me. And he's from Christopher. He said, do helicopter pilots ever have a conflict or an argument with the medical staff? Question mark. The answer would be yes, and we'll go on to that in a minute. And if so, what is the outcome? Question mark. Two really great questions. And I'm gonna cover this today in, you know, and I'm gonna be respectful. Right. But there are a lot of issues. First, I want to say I just read an article that said 80s metal heads have turned out to, in general, they've turned out to be well adjusted adults. What do you think of that one? Don't know how true it is, but it was sure a cool article for us 80s metalheads. So back to the question. Okay, first I want to explain. When you go into the EMS world, there's two basic types of pilot jobs, EMS pilot jobs. One is going to be where you're hospital based, meaning you work for a company, as I did, who's providing a service for the hospital. Okay. And then you have standalone EMS bases. Now the standalone EMS bases in general, you're probably not going to have the same conflicts that you may have at a hospital based program, simply because at a standalone base, the pilot and the medical crew all work for the same company. So you all train together, you work for the same company. You don't have a specific loyalty, let's say to a hospital, right. Because you're based at an airport somewhere or an off airport location and you're just providing service to the area hospitals. Now there's hospital based, as in the case that, that where I worked, I worked for a little company called Omniflight Helicopters. They're now out of. Well, they got sold out. They sold out in the very end, the five years I was with them. At the end they went, got sold out to the biggest EMS provider out there. Right. So everything changed at that point, but that's another story. So I have a lot of respect for the company I worked for, right? It was a small company, they were out of Texas, but you knew everybody down in Texas. No matter where you were flying, you knew the chief pilot, you knew the director of ops, you met the training guys. It was a small enough company that when you went down there for 10 days of training, you got to know everybody. So you knew everybody on a first name basis with the big, huge conglomerates. You're not going to have that one on one. You're not going to probably even rarely ever meet any of the bigwigs, right? So here's what they told us. As the pilot and our company, we are providing services to hospitals, okay? They are our customers. And they were very clear when they stated to us, do not get in an argument with medical crew, particularly the lead flight nurse, because you will not win. They are our customers, we're providing them a service. And if you get in some kind of a pissing match with the medical crew, it doesn't matter who's right or wrong, doesn't matter whether you're right, they're right, she's right, he's right, it does not matter. You will either be moved to another base or your employment will be terminated if we don't have a place to put you. And then of course, what is, you know, maybe the details around what happened, if it was truly, you know, you got in some kind of a argument, you were really standing up for yourself and everything was hunky dory and they had a place for you and they wanted to keep you, okay, they could move you, but they just wanted us to be prepared. And they said, you know, we're providing them a service and honestly, this is the way it works, right? You're providing a service to a hospital, the medical crew, the nurse and the medic, which I have to say, you know, I worked with some wonderful people and these people are professionals at what they do. But pilots and nurses and medics, they're all usually type A personalities, right? Most everybody's pretty headstrong. And it's not uncommon for the pilot to get into some kind of an argument with the medical crew. So again, it doesn't matter. Right or wrong, I'm not bashing anybody, I'm just telling you how it is. So for those of you going into that environment, you got to kind of be prepared that, you know, you go train, you do your job, you be knowledgeable, you be the best you can be, and you do Everything that you think is the safest thing that you can do. And you got to be ready for those personality conflicts that can pop up and just be prepared that you gotta have to watch what you say and you know, you gotta be diplomatic about it. But you know, there's always those cases where sometimes doing the right thing really sucks or doing the right thing might get you fired, doing the right thing might get you moved. There's a million scenarios to how things can play out. But I want to go back to just the simple very question. Are there ever arguments? Yes, they do happen. And what is usually the outcome? Most likely you're going to be moved or be fired. And again, it doesn't matter who's right, it doesn't matter who's wrong. That's just the way that it is. I'm just repeating what I Learned from my 5 years in helicopter EMS. And again, the company I worked for was great, but they just flat out toilets, you know, and they'd been in business I don't know, 30 or 40 years and they had somewhere maybe between 30 to 50 bases around the US and they were kind of growing near the end when they got bought out by the big, you know, the great big huge corporation. So they'd been in business a long time. And when you go through the training, the things that they tell you, it's because they've seen it, right? They know what happens over the years, they know how things play out. And they're gonna train you and teach you the best that they can, that they can. And you got to think about the years of experience. So when they tell you something like do not get in an argument with the metal crew, medical crew, because you're not gonna win, you will be the one that gets moved, replaced, fire, okay, that's just hands down the way it is. So I hope that helps keep that in mind for those of you going for the EMS pilot career. I get it, it's a great dream. I did it for five years and I learned a lot. I learned so much. Just like going back to, you know, everything in my life that's built up to what I do now. You know, going through the police academy was huge for me. Five years of helicopter EMS. I learned a lot, right? It was 135 flying, got to fly twin engine aircraft, got to learn about. I already, I'd flown some 135, but this was, you know, more intense, right. And I learned so much. So it is a great opportunity and there are so many people that want to do it. I just read another comment where a guy said, you know, it's not for everybody. And that's true, right? But in his statement he also said, but I think everyone should try it, right? Because it is fun and it's cool and there's a lot of neat things that happen and you get to fly really cool aircraft. You know, the EC135 I flew was a six million dollar aircraft. Okay? How cool is that? Right? I can say I flew a six million dollar aircraft. So that was fun. So all in all the five years I did it, I have to say I'm glad I did it. It was, it was a wonderful opportunity and it taught me a lot. All right, 182, I'm going to start wrapping it up. But I do got to mention the July 4th special ending Sunday night. That is 33% off private commercial instrument or certified flight instructor yearly memberships. Or we have the big professional pilot package that includes private commercial CFI and instrument that does not expire. So you got the yearly, that's a yearly subscription. If you want to take advantage of the yearly membership, remember it does renew in one year. You can simply remove your credit card after the 24 hour trial and you won't be billed the second year. If you're still working on your rating and you want to keep it, you can keep it for the second year, no problem. The professional pilot is not annual, it's unlimited. So you only have one time fee. And then you keep all those different courses, you keep them unlimited. There is no expiration date. So if it takes you 2, 3, 4, 5 years to get through your ratings, the training is going to be there for you. So you get 33% off with that or on that for the sale. Again ends Sunday night. This is July 4th week, right? It's a great week. And it's Saturday, my favorite day of the week. I'm going to put the links down below that, take you direct to the sales pages and you'll see the normal price and it's got a line through it. So when you sign up with your email, it'll give you the discounted price. Or if you don't see that link or that link doesn't work, just Simply go to helicopterground.com use that code, 33 off. Put that in the coupon box and that will display, then once you enter your information that will display that discounted price for you. So I'm already sweating like a pig. It's one of those days, right? Summertime weather, the sun shines. And then, like right now, it starts clouding up. You feel the heat, you feel the humidity. What's going to happen? Probably a thunderstorm. We got some thunder going on in the background, and I can hear it, so I know it's coming soon. So I'm gonna wrap it up. Subscribe to the channel. Click the bell when you do, and you'll be notified of the daily video. So for all the 80s metalheads, hell, yeah. Rock on. See you in day 183.