Profile of patients served in a private aeromedical transportation service

Abstract

The aeromedical transportation services demand increasingly skilled and specialized professionals, especially trained and experienced nurses to assist severe patients. Recognizing the profile of patients removed by aeromedical transportation can help the nurse on knowledge about the technologies used and to perform a specialized assistance. It is a retrospective, described, transversal and quantitative study, regarding the services performed in a private aeromedical transportation service. The methodology used was the data collection regarding service sheets, performed between 2006 and 2009, containing the following variants: transportation request regimen; reason for transportation request; type of aircraft used; patients' gender and age; worsening etiology; aero-removed patient's destination city and destination hospitals' characteristics. 125 services were identified, whose main customer base were male (65.6%) and elderly (60%) patients. The clinical etiology worsening were the ones occurring in larger amount (70.4%). In the study, the private request is predominant (70.4%) and the main reason for request is the inter-hospital transference or to a more complex hospital (86.4%). The flights were carried out, in a larger amount, in fixed-wing aircrafts (69.6%). São Paulo was the flights' main destination city (84%) and the private hospitals received most aero-removed patients (81.6%). The study demonstrated that the patient served in a private aeromedical transportation service presents a very unique profile, though representative, in comparison with our country's morbidity-mortality standard.