Aeromedical Primary Course

For several years I have wanted to attend the Aeromedical Primary Course, which is six weeks of training that doctors go through before they can work as a flight surgeon in the Air Force.  Flight surgeons are the doctors who take care of aviators and their families, and they have to deal with all of the specific physiologic concerns that are unique to the aviation community.  They also serve as the primary care doctor for aviators and interface with all of the subspecialists taking care of more specific problems aviators might have.  Flight surgeons are often assigned to a flying squadron and are required to log flying hours.  

I don't actually have any desire to be a flight surgeon, but with refractive surgery we work quite a bit with the flying community.  The way things are looking, I expect to be running the refractive surgery program in the Air Force within a few years so there is definitely value in the training.  After trying to work it into my schedule for a couple of years, I finally blocked two weeks to fly up to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio to do the first part of the training.

There was a whole bunch of classroom work, which wasn't too bad.  The hands on part was much better.  I got to go up to spend some time in an altitude chamber going up to 35,000.

You  have to breath oxygen through a face mask at that altitude to survive, but they had us take off the masks for a little while to experience the effects of hypoxia.  There were clipboards in the chamber with some simple math problems to do, but within less than a minute you start acting pretty drunk and are unable to function mentally.

We also got to experience the Barany chair which spins around and simulates vertigo and spatial disorientation experienced in flight.

At the end of the two weeks I got to fly a Cirrus SR22, a really cool single engine aerobatic plane, with an instructor pilot by my side.  It was a partly cloudy day so I was able to climb up and around the big fluffy white puffs of cotton, which seemed a lot neater than flying on a completely clear day which I had done at the Air Force Academy more than 15 years ago.  While the experience was really cool, the air sick feeling I often get in very small aircraft was a good reminder of just one of the reasons I decided to be a doctor and not a pilot.

Overall it was very worthwhile training, but I'll have to see if there is any way to cram the remaining 4 weeks into my schedule to finish it up.