HEMS is one of the few areas of emergency services that is _actually_ a dangerous line of work. It's on par with commercial fishing and logging in terms of fata

HEMS is one of the few areas of emergency services that is _actually_ a dangerous line of work. It's on par with commercial fishing and logging in terms of fatalities per 100,000 workers (as opposed to "regular" fire/EMS/law enforcement jobs, which are safer than being a traveling salesman). I'd love to do flight EMS, but it's not a risk I feel I can responsibly take with a wife and kids (to put that into perspective, "crawling into burning buildings" falls on the other side of that line for me) A large majority of the fatal incidents are "scene" calls (as opposed to inter-facility transfers), and stem from pushing past the edge of the envelope like this article describes. There is also some sad irony in the fact that the patients that are most likely to induce this level of pressure (those closest to death) are also ones that are least likely to benefit from the additional risk taken (i.e. they're gonna die anyway). Around here the majority of scene medevacs are flown by the county sheriff's office. All of their pilots are former military aviators, and are very, very good at flying. I've watched them put helicopters places I wouldn't fly my quadcopter for fear of losing it... Their skills have definitely made the difference between life and death for patients I've handed over to their flight crews. I have a lot of respect for what they do, but I also worry for my friends that fly...