Originally Posted by
UnlimitedAkro
I cant think of any doctors who had to perform emergency surgery on someone while wearing an oxygen mask and goggles, trying to communicate with everyone in the room, while the building around them is burning to the ground and they have minutes to finish everything up safely before we all burn alive.
That's a key factor. Doctors perform complicated tasks under pressure, but not the kind of pressure that comes from fearing for your own life.
That is the acid test in aviation. Not all pilots have been there either.
Medicine is a higher-level profession than aviation in terms of entry requirements, training, and complexity. But medical ability does not translate to the cockpit...doctors often die in airplanes because...
- They can afford high-performance equipment.
- They may be too busy to maintain the proper currency.
- High-performance equipment leads to riskier missions (XC, IMC, etc).
- Some doctors think their medical ability under pressure will translate to the cockpit...it does not unless they maintain currency (I don't mean FAR currency).