Day Around the Bay
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SF Views: The Epsiode Where We Drink
This past Thursday while we were en route from Denver to SFO, 
we were thoroughly enjoying the in-flight movie when screams suddenly broke out from the rear kitchen. Since we happened to be sitting in the very last row of the plane, we were especially caught off guard by the commotion and were forced to break focus from No Reservations (which was actually quite charming) to see what was going on.
Not three feet from our chair was a woman lying on the floor, passed out with blood oozing from the back of her head. Janet, who was traveling to Canada, had passed out, and on her way down hit the back of her head on the corner of the beverage cart. Ouch! When her husband came to see what was going on, Janet had regained consciousness and felt ready to try to stand up. Unfortunately, as Janet was standing up, she fainted again, this time hitting her elbow on said beverage cart.
The flight attendants were freaking out a little, understandably, but did a very nice job calming everyone else on the plane. As the inevitable announcement was made over the loudspeaker ("If there are any doctors or nurses on board...") we expected at least half a dozen medical personnel to flock to the back of the plane. But alas, the sound of crickets could be heard as we soared thousands of feet above the ground.
Excuse me? No doctors or nurses on a flight with like 400 people on it? As if. We couldn't believe Janet's sheer dumb luck that no one on the plane was qualified to aid her in her time of need.
Just when the flight attendants were about to give up, a woman named Kelly across the row from us volunteered her services. As a former EMT (no longer licensed), Kelly was the only person to come forward to offer assistance.
Despite whatever headache of paperwork or medical responsibility lay ahead for the next two hours and beyond, Kelly happily dressed Janet's wounds, took her blood pressure, and sat with her for the rest of the flight.
For this we applaud Kelly of Flight UA 595 and hope that in the future, more Good Samaritans (licensed preferred) will deign to step forward to help their fellow passengers.
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i hope they gave that good samaritan a bottle of bubbly or something comparable. this happened to me several times in one year while flying to europe. someone would always pass out from dehydration and nobody else volunteered to help so i did. simple case of not enough sleep/water or too much booze on a long flight that goes really high in the air.
lufthansa gave me the better bottle of champagne. shame on you united.
;)
The AMA claims there are 690,000 licensed physicians in the United States (let's say there are 300 million Yanks). That's 0.23% of the population, one doc for every 435 people.
The typical transcontinental jetliner holds considerably less than 400 people. Something that might actually fly the DEN-SFO route would be a Boeing 777-200; in a 3-class configuration it seats 305. So yeah, not having a doctor onboard is well within the statistical range.
It always seems like flying is similar to driving, one of those situations where everyone's perenially pissed off and in an "every man for themselves" mode. Sometimes you see air passengers rise above that, though. So, rock on, Kelly!
The doctors were probably drunk in first class.
I hope they stopped serving Bloody Marys from the cart.
UAL.com is showing this flight as being operated on a 737-500 which hold a few more than 100 people. Totally realistic to not have a doctor on that flight.
OMG, I can't believe you people are making me do math. ;) I believe it was a 757, and although I am unsure of that (I'm no aviation nerd), I was in row 35 - the last row. There were six seats in each row. That comes to 210. Subtract some for first class yourself. My brain is tired.
You don't need to be an aviation nerd; just look at Wikipedia for the specs. The definitive model is the 757-200 and in a two-class configuration, it seats 200 passengers; you were probably on one of those. So even less chance there's a doc onboard.
My guess is that you saw "Airplane!" too many times as a kid, so you expected Leslie Nielsen to pop out of business class. :)
mpantone, well done in showing your work, but what about registered nurses? Assuming at least one registered nurse per doctor, doesn't Deborah's original argument hold water? (Sorry, I don't have time to look up the number of nurses in America.)
There's also the consideration that not all flyers (or is it fliers?) will be American. Factor in the number of international travelers on a Denver to SFO flight and locate the similar percentages of doctors and nurses in the countries of their origin.
Then you can take it a step further and ask yourself if doctors and nurses will be over-represented among those who can afford international travel. Or is this getting too complicated already?