An Cosantóir

www.military.ie THE DEFENCE FORCES MAGAZINE | 13 previous times in my service, the P1 side of the roster is still largely populated by Comdts / Lt Cols. This means that we are often away from what is nominally our own primary, supervisory, role. This creates a conflict between what we are meant to be doing and our actual day to day activities which leads to frustration and poten- tially, a level of stress. Whereas in previous times a Comdt might expect to come off the roster to focus on their responsibilities in the Wing, that no longer automatically happens. The result is that the work associated with his actual appointment has to be done somewhere and that's often on EAS duty, which should be admin free in an ideal world. The thing is, if these same guys stopped flying altogether, they'd probably be more stressed, so maybe this one cancels itself out to an extent. 2. EAS ITSELF This is a multifaceted contributor to stress levels. People would assume it's the contact with badly injured people that causes the stress. This not without warrant for some people, but in truth though, it's not the blood dripping from the ceiling jobs (although you'll get those ) that you generally remember and concern for the patient is usually overruled by self-preservation and concern for your crew. Acute stressors can exist here though. Everyone will have flown jobs where they had to deliberately tell themselves to stick by the rule book, one I remember was a 14 year old boy in cardiac arrest ( there was a lot going on with that job besides the patient too, including a roof detaching from a building in the first PDLZ we landed into ) where I had to really tell myself to follow best practice and fly away from our direct track and NOT fly through a shower which was sandwiched between a cloud and a mountain. I would pride myself on my ability to maintain a detachment from the clinical side of the house and keep my focus exclusively on fly- ing the aircraft, but aircrew are normal humans too and you can't help but feel sometimes for the patients and families who are the reason that you're out flying in the first place. Such jobs can also leave you with mental souvenirs (stuff you collect on your travels but realise you don't actually want when you get home). In this same example, I won't forget the sight of our crewman Sgt Alan Martin (Retired) leading a group of NAS personnel towards the heli while also performing CPR on a boy too small for a Lucas automatic CPR machine. That's not PTSD or anything damaging on that scale at all, just sometimes an image sticks with you. Alan was nominated for a Defence Forces Values Award on the back of that flight. DEALING WITH STRESS We can be as removed as we can possibly make ourselves from the patient and even make our decisions entirely objectively under challenging conditions but there's no escaping the human element of what we do sometimes. Maybe I'm just go- ing soft, but on the other hand it is visible on whole crews sometimes and as previously noted, it's usually on the return leg where it may first become apparent. Unlinked to patients (except where they complicate issues by being onboard) is when the flying itself gets stressful. The bad weather scenarios already described are examples of this. Go/ no go decisions in those conditions certainly raise the arousal levels. When you find yourself leapfrogging Plan C to make up new plans as you go along, well, yes, the flying is get- ting hard. It's not a conscious thing, but your responsibility for your crew looms at the back of your mind in a way it doesn't when it's sunshine and unicorns outside. Personally, I notice this kind of effect when I have to tell myself to relax on the controls because my forearms have tensed up, which is common in cadets but rather more rare when you have several thousand hours of flying behind you. It's become a reliable cue for me that I should change something about the scenario we're in. It doesn't mean something dangerous is happening, just that you are now in 'working for a living' territory. Where possible, the best thing to do is to back off a bit, ei- ther geographically moving away from the problem or just reducing speed in order to give yourself room and time to make a decision on what to do or where to go. This flying falls into the 'hard day's work' category and the safest way out of it is good CRM, looking out the window while flying extremely carefully and making the best calls you can, in ever changing environ- mental conditions. It can use up energy pretty quickly and leads to acute fatigue over a prolonged flight in bad weather. Chronically, EAS sometimes uses up your capacity to perform in different ways. For days on end you are in a heightened

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