It’s 9.30am in the Custume Barracks in Athlone and Captain Jason McDermott of the Irish Air Corps is briefing his team.
Surrounded by maps and charts, Captain McDermott goes through the day’s weather forecast and checks in that all the team are well rested for the day ahead.
This is an important part of the briefing as days can be long and intense, given the nature of some of the injuries the air ambulance is called to.
The helicopter used to rescue people in emergency situations is based in the Custume Barracks in Athlone. \ Philip Doyle
The team of six in Athlone carry out vital work, rescuing people in remote and rural locations who need emergency care.
An example of this was a call to Achill Island in June that took the helicopter 26 minutes. The equivalent car journey would have taken over two hours.
The mood among the team is relaxed and light-hearted, but none of them underestimate the importance of their work.
Over tea in the break room, Roscommon native and part-time farmer Captain McDermott, explains how they see a high proportion of farm accidents, particularly at certain times of the year.
The team go through their morning briefing.\ Philip Doyle
“In the spring and summer we see a lot of cow calving accidents. Sometimes it might be a few days after they calved and the cow just flipped,” he says. Almost mid-sentence he’s stopped by the loud sound of a siren whirring. 
Calmly he gets up to go start-up the helicopter and discuss the situation with his team. Next door, the crew are making seamlessly quick decisions on the flight route and landing conditions.
Outside, the helipad has its own courtyard, surrounded by barrack walls and tall grey-squared buildings of cut stone built by the English to house cavalry and infantry units.
The airmen walk calmly, without panic, towards the helicopter and jump on board as the blades start to spin, ready for their first call-out of the day.
Captain Jason McDermott. \ Philip Doyle
Captain, Irish Air Corps
“Once the call comes in, the first person to pick it up is the advanced paramedic,” Captain Jason McDermott tells Irish Country Living.
“Quite an important point is that the advanced paramedic keeps the details of the call to himself so I’m not influenced by other parameters associated with the call.
“Once I make the decision to go or not to go, I go out to the aircraft and get it started up. There are a number of systems so it can take a bit of time just to get it going.
“The co-pilot and paramedic and crewman stay behind for an extra two or three minutes for a kind of virtual recce so they can see what ground conditions are like, including ESB wires. From there we can pick our best landing sight.
“Bales, livestock and wires all have to be taken into account when circling the area and preparing to land.”
Farm calls
“Quite a large proportion of our calls are farm accidents, but another important point is that even though not all of the calls are specifically agriculture related, we are interacting with the farm community on a daily basis.
We’d always try to avoid a field with livestock because they can be quite unpredictable and we try not to land in a field of crops
“There might be a road accident we’re called to but we’re relying on the goodwill of the farmer to let us land in their field to be as close to the scene as possible and we’re really grateful to the farming community for that.
“We’d always try to avoid a field with livestock because they can be quite unpredictable and we try not to land in a field of crops.”
He advises farmers to try to never work alone and always carry a mobile phone with them.
Drones
Captain McDermott makes a special appeal to people not to fly drones near helicopters.
“We’re not against people flying drones, but they are quite dangerous to helicopters
“The windscreen on the helicopter is quite tough, but an impact from a metallic object like a drone would be catastrophic to the crew members and the aircraft.”
Emotional toll
Given the nature and intensity of the work, Captain McDermott says it is important to have a de-brief at the end of every day.
“We do land close to it and it’s hard not to feel for the family and trauma of the patient.
We always come back and have a post-flight de-brief, especially when some jobs are worse than others
“It can be difficult because we all have mothers and fathers and families and some of us have children as well. It’s very hard not to be involved or affected by it someway.
“We always come back and have a post-flight de-brief, especially when some jobs are worse than others. We do actively employ peer support, we have regular training and the best type of support in a post-traumatic event like that is the support you get from the colleague.
“But we do quite a lot of desensitisation training and work with the ambulance service before starting so we get experience of accidents.
“It is quite a considerable aspect of our job, but it is something that we’re trained to deal with.”
Corporal crewman Diarmuid Corcoran. \ Philip Doyle
Corporal crewman
“When the call comes in, my job is to work with the advanced paramedic and pilot two to go through the navigation and the route – basically how we’re going to get from A to B.
“You’ve pilot number 1 and pilot number two and I’m the crewman on the air ambulance. In flight then my main role is back-up navigation with the pilots, working with the advanced paramedic.
“I’m an emergency medical technician as well, so when we’re going to a job I’m in my aviation role and when we land on a scene and the advanced paramedic needs assistance, I go into my medical role and help the patient get loaded up
“I do the on-scene management, so we could have landed on a road or we could have landed in a farmyard. If it’s in a rural setting, you could have people appear out of nowhere and you also have to liaise with gardaí.”
Farm accidents
Corporal Corcoran says the team can be met with a number of injuries caused by farm accidents.
“Because of the nature of farming you can get a broad range of crush or amputations, especially with the machinery.
“It’s not the nice side of the job, but being able to get to these locations is important because if there’s been an accident at the end of a field with a PTO or in a remote shed, we’re able to land next to the farmer and get the advanced paramedic to them and the help they need straight away.
Corporal crewman Diarmuid Corcoran prepares for landing. \ Philip Doyle
“Then because farming is a family industry, you could have children involved unfortunately, you might find a child caught up in machinery. Children being children, they might have been playing somewhere they shouldn’t have been.
“There was an incident where a man had pushed his wife out of the way of a charging animal and he got crushed, but when we landed in the field, the bull was in the same field so we had to take that into consideration as well.”
Corcoran says in the majority of cases on farms, it is usually the young or the elderly who have been injured.
Working as a team
“We work closely as a crew. In the military there are ranks, but when we work closely on the aircraft, the skipper might have the final say, but we call each other by first names. We have a good working relationship.
We might wear a uniform but at the end of the day I have a family at home
“We go and do a debrief to make sure that everyone is OK after a call. Looking after yourself after the call is just as important as getting to the call.
“We might wear a uniform but at the end of the day I have a family at home. I finish my four-day shift, I take my uniform off and I go home then.
“You have to be very self-aware of issues and we do a lot of training in mental health and looking after each other.”
Brendan Whelan, advanced paramedic. \ Philip Doyle
Advanced paramedic, National
Ambulance Service
Brendan Whelan is an experienced advanced paramedic and feels passionately about the partnership between the Irish Air Corps and the National Ambulance Service.
“Something I feel very strongly about is that we are able to provide very significant pain relief to patients that we might manage, in this case who might suffer major trauma,” Whelan explains.
“For example, we carry intravenous morphine, fentynal – which are very powerful opiate drugs – and we also carry ketamine for patients to provide pain relief and also for disassociation, which is sedation for patients who may suffer from a head injury or might be difficult to manage.
“This particular aircraft carries a range of equipment we can use to treat patients who are suffering from a range of traumatic injuries.
We have equipment where we can pass a tube through someone’s vocal chords to support their breathing
“As advanced paramedics, we can bring advanced life support to the side of the patient.
“We have equipment where we can pass a tube through someone’s vocal chords to support their breathing.
“We can provide intravenous access to provide patients with a range of medications to treat things like heart attacks or major trauma.
Timing of farm accidents
“Particularly in the summer time, we’re called out on a fairly regular basis to farm accidents, the types of things that we see range from a whole spectrum of injuries.
“We go to farm accidents where tractors are involved in a crash or a person is trapped in a machine.
“We go to calls where farmers had machinery fall on them and we also might go to falls from heights.
“Farmers attacked by livestock is also a major one, usually cows or heifers. I don’t think people realise how dangerous cows can actually be.
“The most vulnerable are the very old and very young. As we get older, our ability to compensate for major trauma diminishes.”
What to do in emergency
“The first thing people should do in an accident is dial 999 or 112 and ask for an ambulance if they need one.
“It really helps if people know their Eircode if they’ve been injured near their house.”
Whelan urges people to carry a mobile phone, explaining that the National Ambulance Service can send people a text, which they can open to allow the service to pinpoint their exact location in case of an emergency.
It’s 9.30am in the Custume Barracks in Athlone and Captain Jason McDermott of the Irish Air Corps is briefing his team.
Surrounded by maps and charts, Captain McDermott goes through the day’s weather forecast and checks in that all the team are well rested for the day ahead.
This is an important part of the briefing as days can be long and intense, given the nature of some of the injuries the air ambulance is called to.
The helicopter used to rescue people in emergency situations is based in the Custume Barracks in Athlone. \ Philip Doyle
The team of six in Athlone carry out vital work, rescuing people in remote and rural locations who need emergency care.
An example of this was a call to Achill Island in June that took the helicopter 26 minutes. The equivalent car journey would have taken over two hours.
The mood among the team is relaxed and light-hearted, but none of them underestimate the importance of their work.
Over tea in the break room, Roscommon native and part-time farmer Captain McDermott, explains how they see a high proportion of farm accidents, particularly at certain times of the year.
The team go through their morning briefing.\ Philip Doyle
“In the spring and summer we see a lot of cow calving accidents. Sometimes it might be a few days after they calved and the cow just flipped,” he says. Almost mid-sentence he’s stopped by the loud sound of a siren whirring.
Calmly he gets up to go start-up the helicopter and discuss the situation with his team. Next door, the crew are making seamlessly quick decisions on the flight route and landing conditions.
Outside, the helipad has its own courtyard, surrounded by barrack walls and tall grey-squared buildings of cut stone built by the English to house cavalry and infantry units.
The airmen walk calmly, without panic, towards the helicopter and jump on board as the blades start to spin, ready for their first call-out of the day.
Captain Jason McDermott. \ Philip Doyle
Captain, Irish Air Corps
“Once the call comes in, the first person to pick it up is the advanced paramedic,” Captain Jason McDermott tells Irish Country Living.
“Quite an important point is that the advanced paramedic keeps the details of the call to himself so I’m not influenced by other parameters associated with the call.
“Once I make the decision to go or not to go, I go out to the aircraft and get it started up. There are a number of systems so it can take a bit of time just to get it going.
“The co-pilot and paramedic and crewman stay behind for an extra two or three minutes for a kind of virtual recce so they can see what ground conditions are like, including ESB wires. From there we can pick our best landing sight.
“Bales, livestock and wires all have to be taken into account when circling the area and preparing to land.”
Farm calls
“Quite a large proportion of our calls are farm accidents, but another important point is that even though not all of the calls are specifically agriculture related, we are interacting with the farm community on a daily basis.
We’d always try to avoid a field with livestock because they can be quite unpredictable and we try not to land in a field of crops
“There might be a road accident we’re called to but we’re relying on the goodwill of the farmer to let us land in their field to be as close to the scene as possible and we’re really grateful to the farming community for that.
“We’d always try to avoid a field with livestock because they can be quite unpredictable and we try not to land in a field of crops.”
He advises farmers to try to never work alone and always carry a mobile phone with them.
Drones
Captain McDermott makes a special appeal to people not to fly drones near helicopters.
“We’re not against people flying drones, but they are quite dangerous to helicopters
“The windscreen on the helicopter is quite tough, but an impact from a metallic object like a drone would be catastrophic to the crew members and the aircraft.”
Emotional toll
Given the nature and intensity of the work, Captain McDermott says it is important to have a de-brief at the end of every day.
“We do land close to it and it’s hard not to feel for the family and trauma of the patient.
We always come back and have a post-flight de-brief, especially when some jobs are worse than others
“It can be difficult because we all have mothers and fathers and families and some of us have children as well. It’s very hard not to be involved or affected by it someway.
“We always come back and have a post-flight de-brief, especially when some jobs are worse than others. We do actively employ peer support, we have regular training and the best type of support in a post-traumatic event like that is the support you get from the colleague.
“But we do quite a lot of desensitisation training and work with the ambulance service before starting so we get experience of accidents.
“It is quite a considerable aspect of our job, but it is something that we’re trained to deal with.”
Corporal crewman Diarmuid Corcoran. \ Philip Doyle
Corporal crewman
“When the call comes in, my job is to work with the advanced paramedic and pilot two to go through the navigation and the route – basically how we’re going to get from A to B.
“You’ve pilot number 1 and pilot number two and I’m the crewman on the air ambulance. In flight then my main role is back-up navigation with the pilots, working with the advanced paramedic.
“I’m an emergency medical technician as well, so when we’re going to a job I’m in my aviation role and when we land on a scene and the advanced paramedic needs assistance, I go into my medical role and help the patient get loaded up
“I do the on-scene management, so we could have landed on a road or we could have landed in a farmyard. If it’s in a rural setting, you could have people appear out of nowhere and you also have to liaise with gardaí.”
Farm accidents
Corporal Corcoran says the team can be met with a number of injuries caused by farm accidents.
“Because of the nature of farming you can get a broad range of crush or amputations, especially with the machinery.
“It’s not the nice side of the job, but being able to get to these locations is important because if there’s been an accident at the end of a field with a PTO or in a remote shed, we’re able to land next to the farmer and get the advanced paramedic to them and the help they need straight away.
Corporal crewman Diarmuid Corcoran prepares for landing. \ Philip Doyle
“Then because farming is a family industry, you could have children involved unfortunately, you might find a child caught up in machinery. Children being children, they might have been playing somewhere they shouldn’t have been.
“There was an incident where a man had pushed his wife out of the way of a charging animal and he got crushed, but when we landed in the field, the bull was in the same field so we had to take that into consideration as well.”
Corcoran says in the majority of cases on farms, it is usually the young or the elderly who have been injured.
Working as a team
“We work closely as a crew. In the military there are ranks, but when we work closely on the aircraft, the skipper might have the final say, but we call each other by first names. We have a good working relationship.
We might wear a uniform but at the end of the day I have a family at home
“We go and do a debrief to make sure that everyone is OK after a call. Looking after yourself after the call is just as important as getting to the call.
“We might wear a uniform but at the end of the day I have a family at home. I finish my four-day shift, I take my uniform off and I go home then.
“You have to be very self-aware of issues and we do a lot of training in mental health and looking after each other.”
Brendan Whelan, advanced paramedic. \ Philip Doyle
Advanced paramedic, National
Ambulance Service
Brendan Whelan is an experienced advanced paramedic and feels passionately about the partnership between the Irish Air Corps and the National Ambulance Service.
“Something I feel very strongly about is that we are able to provide very significant pain relief to patients that we might manage, in this case who might suffer major trauma,” Whelan explains.
“For example, we carry intravenous morphine, fentynal – which are very powerful opiate drugs – and we also carry ketamine for patients to provide pain relief and also for disassociation, which is sedation for patients who may suffer from a head injury or might be difficult to manage.
“This particular aircraft carries a range of equipment we can use to treat patients who are suffering from a range of traumatic injuries.
We have equipment where we can pass a tube through someone’s vocal chords to support their breathing
“As advanced paramedics, we can bring advanced life support to the side of the patient.
“We have equipment where we can pass a tube through someone’s vocal chords to support their breathing.
“We can provide intravenous access to provide patients with a range of medications to treat things like heart attacks or major trauma.
Timing of farm accidents
“Particularly in the summer time, we’re called out on a fairly regular basis to farm accidents, the types of things that we see range from a whole spectrum of injuries.
“We go to farm accidents where tractors are involved in a crash or a person is trapped in a machine.
“We go to calls where farmers had machinery fall on them and we also might go to falls from heights.
“Farmers attacked by livestock is also a major one, usually cows or heifers. I don’t think people realise how dangerous cows can actually be.
“The most vulnerable are the very old and very young. As we get older, our ability to compensate for major trauma diminishes.”
What to do in emergency
“The first thing people should do in an accident is dial 999 or 112 and ask for an ambulance if they need one.
“It really helps if people know their Eircode if they’ve been injured near their house.”
Whelan urges people to carry a mobile phone, explaining that the National Ambulance Service can send people a text, which they can open to allow the service to pinpoint their exact location in case of an emergency.
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