The typical hiring process is: application review, computer test, resume review, phone interview, clinical/HR interview in Denver, CO. Then if you are hired you will go to Denver for a 10 day indoc, where you will cover flight topics, NVG requirements, advanced skills, intubations, difficult airways, ventilator management/RSI, and several other medical topics. Typically on your last day you will go to a human cadaver lab to practice all of the invasive skills (chest tube, needle decompression, needle cric, surgical cric, escharotomy, IO, intubation using DL and VL.
From there you will be released to start your 3rd rider shifts. The amount of these will vary based on what program you are at. In some programs once you have done 5 patient flights you will be cleared to test out while others may require a specific number of transfers or 911s or even that you complete one RSI.
From there you go to 3rd rider testing at your designated training center. You will have 4 patient scenarios that you must complete at a competent level. You will have 1 adult, 1 pediatric, 1 infant/neonatal, 1 high risk OB. You need to adequately assess, treat, and manage the patients using AMC guidelines. Then you are cleared to operate as a normal crew member.
Once you are working you will have at a minimum yearly requirements of the human cadaver lab, and HPS (Human Patient Simulations) with the 4 patients. You have to pass 3/4 of the simulations. If not you will usually have an education plan drawn up and will retest. If you still don’t pass you will likely be pulled from the flight line and will have to go to Denver for education.
There are many regional differences so some areas might have more education than others do (ECMO, IABP, Impella, etc). For instance in the PAC West area (CA, AZ) we are going to be starting quarterly chest tube training with our medical directors.
