The physiological demands of helicopter winch rescue in water and over land

Abstract

Physically demanding water and over land winch rescues are critical tasks for helicopter paramedics. To assess the physiological demands of winch rescue, 14 intensive care flight paramedics (12 male, 2 female, mean (±SD) age 44.3 (±5.4) years, experience 7.1 (±5.2) years) completed land and water-based task simulations. For the land task, VO₂ was 41.7 (±4.5) mL kg⁻¹ min⁻¹, or 86 (±11) % of VO_2peak. Task duration was 7.0 (±3.6) min, or 53 (±27) % of maximal acceptable work duration (MAWD) (13.2 (±9.0) min). For the water task, VO₂ was 36.7 (±4.4) mL kg⁻¹ min⁻¹, (81 (±12) % of VO_2peak). Water task duration was 10.2 (±1.1) min, or 47.6 (±4.8) % of calculated MAWD (21.0 (±15.6) min). These results demonstrate that helicopter rescue paramedics work at very high physiological workloads for moderate durations, and these demands should be considered when developing selection tests and when deploying to rescues, to ensure staff are capable of task performance.

Practitioner summary: Paramedics performed helicopter winch rescue task simulations in water and over land. Paramedics worked at 81% of VO_2peak for 10.2 min and 86% of VO_2peak for 7 min for swim and land tasks respectively. Rescue organisations should consider these demands when selecting and credentialing staff and when deploying to incidents.

Abbreviations: HEMS: helicopter emergency medical service; ICFP: intensive care flight paramedic; MAWD: maximal acceptable work duration; PES: physical employment standards; SAR: search and rescue

Keywords:

• Human performance
• aerobic capacity
• physical employment standards
• search and rescue
• paramedic

Acknowledgements

We thank the ICFPs of Ambulance Victoria, for without their participation and cooperation this study would have not been possible. We thank the management team at Ambulance Victoria, and the Ambulance Victoria Centre for Research and Evaluation for the support of this project. We thank the numerous Ambulance Victoria paramedics and Monash University students who volunteered their time as research assistants to aid data collection.

Disclosure statement

BM is an operational ICFP with Ambulance Victoria. Ambulance Victoria had no influence on study design, protocol development or reporting of results. All other authors have no competing interests to declare.

Data availability statement

Deidentified data are available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author (BM).

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by research grants from the Ambulance Victoria/Helimed 1 Ambulance Auxiliary and the Australasian College of Paramedicine. Ambulance Victoria provided in-kind support with access to medical consumables and reimbursement of accommodation costs to support the research team. Ambulance Victoria provided technical support through the provision of heart rate monitoring devices and capillary blood lactate monitors and associated consumables. None of the funders had influence on study design, protocol development or reporting of results.