Flight surgeon

[1] Flight surgeons are medical doctors who serve as the primary care physicians for a variety of military aviation personnel, including pilots, Flight Officers, navigators, astronauts, missile combat crews, air traffic controllers, UAV operators and other aircrew members, both officer and enlisted.

In some jurisdictions, such as the U.S military, flight surgeons are trained to fill general public health and occupational and preventive medicine roles, and only infrequently perform surgery in an operating theater sense.

They may be called upon to provide medical consultation as members of an investigation board into a military or aviation or spaceflight mishap.

The roots of aviation medicine extend back to the earliest scientific discoveries of gas laws and the makeup of Earth's atmosphere as these factors relate to the human body.

As aviation progressed from lighter-than-air balloons to fixed wing controlled flight to spaceflight, the disciplines of medicine and physiology were required to track with each technological advance.

Physicians and physiologists, such as John Jeffries (1745–1819) and Paul Bert (1833–1886), conducted experiments on humans in flight and documented the body's response to these physiologic stressors.

[3][4] The term is especially associated with Colonel (later Brigadier General) Theodore C. Lyster (the first Chief Surgeon, Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps, U.S. Army), and with Major Isaac H. Jones.

[5] The original intent was for the military and the Surgeon General to understand what was causing the high flight mishap rate.

The 1941 movie Dive Bomber, although focused on Naval Aviation, highlighted the role of the flight surgeon just prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, and demonstrated how solving the problems of hypoxia at altitude would reduce the aircraft mishap rate.

For example, some routine treatments, such as certain antihistamines, when administered to aviation personnel, are cause for temporary grounding (loss of flying privileges) until the therapy and its effects are completed.

Flight surgeon training varies depending on the branch of military service: In the U.S. Air Force, most flight surgeons receive initial training at the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine (USAFSAM) at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.

[9] Some Air Force Flight Surgeons ultimately move on to the Residency in Aerospace Medicine (RAM), a three-year program involving a Master of Public Health, a year of aerospace medical training, and a year of either occupational or preventive medical training.

[10] A limited number of USAF Flight Surgeons may also perform duties as Pilot-Physicians (Air Force Specialty Code 48VX).

The purpose of pilot-physicians is to provide "integrated operational and aerospace medicine guidance" in the research, development, testing, and evaluation of Air Force systems and missions to realize the greatest effectiveness and cost savings.

On 21 April 2011 the USAF Pilot-Physician Program (PPP) was completely revised to make "... the most of the special resources of Air Force officers who are simultaneously qualified both as pilots and flight surgeons...", with a senior pilot-physician selected by the Air Force Surgeon General to be Program Director, and assignment of designated command, staff, research, training, and education billets as well as duty in operational units.