Passenger medical emergencies from the crew side: what actually happens, who does what, and the one that changed me
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#1 Purser, Nairobi originally, and I have handled more medical situations than I can count. New crew are frightened of the first one. Here is what actually happens so that when yours comes you have already seen it in your head.
The call
A passenger presses the bell or a neighbour comes to the galley. 'The man next to me does not look right.' You go. You look. Most of the time it is a faint, a panic, low blood sugar, too much wine at altitude. Sometimes it is not.
The first minute
Assess: responsive or not, breathing or not, any obvious cause. Call the purser (or you are the purser and you call the crew). Oxygen if needed. The medical kit if needed. The PA for a doctor if needed, and on a full long haul there is almost always one, and they are almost always wonderful, and occasionally they are a dentist who is very honest about being a dentist.
The next ten minutes
The captain is told. The ground medical advice line is contacted through the flight deck if it is serious, and a doctor on the ground talks the crew or the onboard doctor through it. The decision about diverting is the captain's, informed by that call. Diversions are rarer than passengers think and more common than crew like.
Who does what
One crew member with the passenger, always, talking to them. One on the equipment. The purser coordinating with the flight deck and the doctor. The rest keep the cabin normal, because a cabin that sees a medical situation panics, and the other 300 passengers still need the service to feel normal.
The one that changed me
A man in his sixties, Dubai to Nairobi, cardiac. We did CPR for thirty minutes with a nurse from row 22. He did not survive. The captain diverted anyway because that is the rule. What changed me was not the death, which the training prepares you for in a way. It was the family in the next row, who I had to sit with for the next two hours while the aircraft went where it went. Nobody trains you for the two hours after. Now I train the new crew for it: the after is the job as much as the CPR.
For the new crew
You will freeze for one second. Then the training takes over. That is what it is for. And afterwards, talk to someone. The crew who do not talk are the ones who carry it.
Your experiences, the ones you can share.
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#2 The after is the job as much as the CPR. Fourteen years and nobody has said it better. The family in the next row is the part I still think about from mine. Thank you for writing it.
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#3 Cabin manager, and the 'one crew member with the passenger, always, talking' rule is the one I enforce most. The person in the aisle with the oxygen is doing the medicine. The person holding the hand is doing the rest.
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#4 Delta, and the honest dentist is real, I have had two. Both were more useful than they thought. And the ground medical line is the thing new crew do not know exists and should: you are never alone with the decision.
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#5 Training, first aid week was last week, and this is the post I needed after it. The freeze for one second and then the training. Understood.
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#7 Finnair, and mine was a birth. Helsinki to Bangkok, a woman at 36 weeks who had lied at check in, a midwife in row 30, and a baby over Kazakhstan. Not every medical is a tragedy. That one is the best day of my career and she is called Aino.