Last week it was reported that doctors and nurses weren’t boarding Lifeflight air ambulances because of safety concerns. Ashley Blais is a family medicine and ER doctor in Ste Rose, and she explains where the doctors are coming from.

“The province has used private air ambulance companies for about half the time in the past year and often uses smaller King Air 200s when they require King Air 250s or 350s. They need a mechanical lift, mechanical doors, and noise reduction. This has not been given to the program by the government and therefore, shut them down. They also stopped hiring pilots in another move towards privatization.”

Blais says there are some other issues with the new planes. If the planes have to go to Edmonton for congenital heart infants, the plane will need to refuel on the way there, which wasn’t the case before. She adds that the new planes can’t land on gravel strips, meanwhile most northern communities only use gravel strips.

Blais says rural doctors are being asked to leave their posts to fly with Lifeflight.

“Most docs outside larger centres do not know how to operate a ventilator and they’re asking us to get on these planes and manage critical care patients outside of our facility and outside of our scope, or practice, outside of our skill or training, really. Remote physicians are not trained on the physiological changes when a person’s body is in the air, let alone life support.”

Blais adds that Dauphin has been impacted by this when the anesthesiologist couldn’t board the plane because there would have been no back up in Dauphin for heart intubation and maternity anesthetics. In the end, a surgeon was sent on the plane instead.