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Apr
15
2015
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Posted 9 years 223 days ago ago by Randy Mains
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“The doctor told me I’d never walk again,” former Utah flight nurse
Stein Rosqvist told the group with obvious emotion. “I saw that
wheelchair being pushed towards me down the corridor and said, ‘That’s
definitely not for me.’”
Through months of physical therapy by a nurse that would not
permit him to say, “I can’t,” Stein walks today. His is just one of the
stories I heard during the three-day digital story workshop I attended
recently in Denver, Colorado.
Denise Ward, a former flight nurse and crash survivor recalled
her own harrowing story that occurred while flying in a brand new
aircraft, six months after Stein’s crash:
“The tail rotor trunnion was defective and came off in flight. We
began spinning and crashed on a mountainside. The front of the aircraft
was torn off. I could see the pilot lying face down. Judging from the
injury to the back of his head, I immediately knew he was dead.”
Director of Safety for Metro Aviation, Tarek Loutfy, shared his
greatest fear with our group. “I dread the day when I may have to knock
on the front door of one of our people to tell their family members that
their loved one was killed in a helicopter crash.”
Some stories had rarely been revealed. Greg Schano, a flight
nurse at MedFlight of Ohio, said, “I haven’t even shared my story with
my mom.”
Communications specialist Zachary Doran and flight paramedic
Mandi McComas, both from Carilion Clinic Life-Guard, recalled an
incident where Mandi, brand new to flight nursing, narrowly escaped a
mid-air collision with two F-15s flying above, and below, her and her
team. Zachary was on duty that day and explains what happened. “After
the initial radio call, the pilot added, ‘There are two more,’ … then
silence. Until I knew they were OK, it was the longest minute of my
life.”
Those were just a few of the stories told at the Fifth Digital
Safety Story Workshop, the brainchild of former flight nurse and
Director of Research at The Center for Medical Transport Research Dr.
Cathy Jaynes, aided by her Research Support Coordinator Pat Jones. “The
FAA is very impressed by what we do here,” Jaynes told us. “It’s the new
face of safety education.”
A week prior to our arrival, the seven of us were asked to
consider a personal story that only each of us individually could tell,
one that answers the question: What does safety look like? In addition
to Cathy Jaynes, guiding us on the journey to create our own personal
three- to four-minute documentaries (digital stories) were seasoned
facilitators Daniel Weinshenker and Mary Ann McNair. Our stories would
be added to the 33 digital documentaries already posted at
www.tcmtr.org, to act as teaching tools and agents for change in
strengthening the HEMS industry’s culture of safety.
On the first morning of the workshop, we learned about the
elements of digital storytelling. We watched several examples to give us
an idea of what we were going to create, and then formed a ‘story
circle’ where each of us in turn shared our personal story with the
group. The facilitators asked us to find new and deeper meaning when
telling our story, to delve deep into our emotions of the event: How did
we feel afterward? How did it affect our colleagues, our family
members, and our lives? Had we been changed in some way? If so, how?
What did we learn? Each listener in the room gave the storyteller
feedback, asking questions to make them think more deeply about their
minidocumentary and how best to tell it.
Our group then split so that each of us could be alone to compose a
300- to 400-word script. As we crafted our story, we received feedback
from the facilitators until we were satisfied. Then we individually went
with a facilitator to record our voice-overs.
When all narration had been recorded, we were given our own personal
Apple laptop loaded with video editing software. We arranged pictures
and video clips we’d brought with us to be included in our
documentaries. If there was something missing, it was filmed there. In
my case, my hands were filmed cutting out names of those who had lost
their lives in a medical helicopter crash.
Once everything was assembled (voice-over, clips, pictures, sound
effects, music, etc.) we were shown how to insert them onto a storyline
while the facilitators worked with us individually to add effects,
polishing our productions to professional quality.
In those grueling three days, to my personal amazement, I managed to
put together quite an impressive four-minute documentary. It detailed
how, because of three hazardous attitudes I’d exhibited one
night—invulnerability, ‘machoism,’ and ‘get-there-itis’—I nearly managed
to kill myself and the doctor and nurse who had entrusted their lives
to me.
It was January 1979, when HEMS was new in America. I was piloting an
Alouette III, pressing the weather to pick up a 5-year-old girl at an
outlying hospital who had been beaten unconscious by her stepfather,
when I inadvertently flew into the low overcast. It was all I could do
to make a slow 180-degree turn referencing the crude flight instruments,
descend, and break out of the clouds at 450 feet. I told that
particular story so that other pilots might identify those same
attitudes in themselves and thus break a link in a possible forming
error chain … and live to fly another day.
Late afternoon on the last day, when we’d all finished our stories,
popcorn was popped, two champagne bottles were uncorked, we toasted one
another celebrating our accomplishment, and then we watched each digital
story in turn. It was a very emotive event; there was not one dry eye
in the room at the end of that screening.
A visceral bonding takes place when a small group shares such
personal and intimate stories by exposing vulnerabilities, revealing
mistakes made, and reopening emotional wounds. Picking at scars once
thought healed takes great trust and bravery. We all hope our
documentaries will act as teaching tools and help promote change in
strengthening the HEMS industry’s culture of safety. That would be the
greatest gift of all.
About Randy: Randy Mains is an author, public speaker, and a
CRM/AMRM consultant who works in the helicopter industry after a long
career of aviation adventure. He currently serves as chief CRM/AMRM
instructor for Oregon Aero. He may be contacted at
[email protected]