1951-02-10 — Page 3

THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1951,

MANOEUVRING a life raft is an important part of Flight Nurse training at Ran- dolph Field, Tex. Having leapt into the water after a simulated plane crash,

the four students head for "shore." Situations like this, for which one must be prepared, justify strict physical qualifications demanded of them.

LESSONS

IN SURVIVAL

Flight Nurses Learn to Tend Casualties

High Over the Ocean or Adrift on the Sea

·

"HERE'S a'new type airlift over the Pacific, one that's paying

TH

off by saving countless American lives. It's a shuttle-serv~ Ice bringing to hospitals in the U. S, soldiers and sallors ser- iously wounded in the bloody Korean battle arena.

In each plane are one or more Flight Nurses, many of whom have flown thousands of miles on their errands of mercy. Keeping a patient alive in 'a respirator or giving a blood trans- fusion are tasks requiring the highest skill, even in a well- equipped hospital. To perform them high in the air, where even breathing is a problem, is but one of many specialized jobs the nurses must learn, In addition, there is always the threat of their plane crashing of being forced down.

THE CARE AND HANDLING of a pollo patient is demonstrated by Capt. Mary E. Headley. When a patient is in a plane 25,000 feet in the air this calls for the utmost nursing skill

KNOWING how to hit the water properly may some day save this Flight Nurse's tita. She has taken oft shoes before leaping feet first, arms folded over her Mae West..

¿PREPARING: LƠr 'move a patient, in the school's winter chamber, three students taste the hardships of Arețle nurviva). Temperature is 20 degrees below zero. The snow is real.

DURING an actual air evacuation, student Lt. Madeline Barney- castle learns application of a pneumatic balance resuscitator. Unique in her profession, the Flight Nurse learns her specia lized work at the Air Force School of Aviation Medicine, Ran- dolph Field, Tex. She must be a graduate nurse even to be accepted and between 21 and 36 years old.

The requirements are rigid and are followed by a nine-werk course covering four primary objectives; 1. To train students in basic principles of aviation medicine so they may understand the peculiar problems imposed on the nursing care of casual- ties by flight. 2. To prepare a nurse for handling medical, aur- gical and mental patients in the cramped quarters of a plane. 3. To acquaint the Flight Nurse, with the quickest and most efficient methods of medical planning for the safe air transpor tation of gallenta. 4. To show them what to do if a plone is ditched in the ocean or crashes in an isolated, spot.

All training, however, le not strictly medical. Time Is de- voted to air discipline and flying safety, parachutes, meteoro logy and communications.

The School of Aviation Medicine, commanded by Brig. Gen. Otis O. Benson, Jr., has been training Flight Nurses since 1044 It has already turned out almost 2,000 of these specialisia.

GETTING aboard a life rafi without tipping it is a trick in itself, as Lt..Jean Thomp son finds out. Holding on to her hat during the dunking is even more of a tricki: