It's not how long you've been in practice but how often you fly. Data I have from a major British airline indicates that the crew are faced with a medical incident of some kind once every 48 sectors on their long haul operation. I don't have any information about short haul but one might expect fewer problems on short sectors as sick passengers would perhaps be more likely to keep their symptoms to themselves until they are off the plane.

In the last five years I think I've done around 500 sectors (a mix of long and short haul) and I can only remember being asked to help four times.

I can only recall one incident in 70 or so flights since 9/11. Early morning flight was delayed after loading due to an incoherent passenger who hadn't taken his insulin. An RN who was sitting next to my GF and I finally convinced the flight crew to call for emergency medical services. Two EMTs removed the gentleman from the plane. The delay was about an hour while crew tried to decide how to handle things.

Wow, that's good that no one has ever got sick on your flights. As I would hate to be the poor soul who got stuck getting help from a doctor who was more worried about his malpractice insurance, than saving people's lives.

As for knowledge, I would presume any medical professional (doctor, nurse, EMT, etc) would have better knowledge about helping someone than the accountant they are seated next to. And, personally, if given the choice of getting help from someone, I would take the doctor (who might be a bit out of his element) over the guy in 1A whose whole medical knowledge comes from seeing season 1 of Grey�s Anatomy.

Final point. Some flights, have 100 medical professionals, some flights have 0. Some people will see 100 requests for help, some will see 0. Personally, I have seen 1. Air travel is an intresting example of the law of large numbers. Each frequent travel contributes such a tiny percentage to the overall probability that their experience can often not be remotely close to the expected value.

That has to be frustrating for a physician to deal with. He slept well. Maybe he was dead tired.

I agree with the poster upthread - it's not the years of travel or practice, but rather the frequency and duration of flights; emergencies do seem to be more common on longer flights.

I am a frequent flyer (like many on this website), and spent 12 years in jobs involving almost daily air travel (150,000+ miles BIS annually), though I have changed jobs and cut back to 50 - 100K annually, which has been a pretty stable baseline over my career - family trips, vacations, annual Third World humanitarian aid trips, CME, Star Alliance MegaDO, etc. So no, this is not a "product of my imagination."

I suspect that many health professionals have your attitude about CYA, but personally, I'd rather help the sick person as best I can than know someone might have been seriously injured or dead because I didn't offer emergency assistance. In general, Good Samaritan Acts cover the liability aspect of such assistance. Of course I don't bill the patient or airline, nor have I ever received any "compensation" other than one bottle of wine from the FA once, and a couple of letters of appreciation from the airline.

Usually I am the only health professional to come forward; if there are others available, we look at the nature of the patient's problem, the skills of the people on hand, and let the most qualified take the lead. If there had been a cardiologist or an EMT on board when those two suspected heart attacks occurred, I'd have gladly deferred, and one time a State Highway Patrol Officer and I planned how we would do CPR together if it had become necessary. It did not, but I was just glad to have someone else around trained in BCLS, whether she was a licensed health care professional or not. Once an ophthalmologist was relieved to defer to me when the sick traveler had asthma.

I'm a family practitioner, though I have spent many years in an urgent care setting, which is reasonably good preparation for the in-flight emergency situation. In-flight is never as good as an ambulance or ER, but it is not as though there is a choice. At least today, there is almost always oxygen available, and usually contact with an on-the-ground emergency medical services consultant; sometimes there is the capability to transmit an EKG in-flight to said consultant (yeah LH!).

I have never "abandoned" a traveler I assist in-flight, so long as they need it and consent to continued monitoring (not all consent, and not all need it). That is why I do not fall back asleep on red-eyes when someone is ill though - it's bit nerve-wracking for me worrying if the other shoe will drop. If the traveler is quite ill and consents, I remain with them until the ambulance meets the plane at the gate after landing. And for all but the most minor events, the captain calls for the paramedics to be at the gate. It doesn't matter what the initials are after my name - the captain is always in charge and makes all the decisions, sometimes with my medical input.