THE FLYING DOCTOR
AUCKLANDER EMMA BATISTICH (41) GOES TO GREAT HEIGHTS TO HELP
Emma takes to the skies
I’d been a specialist in emergency medicine for nearly 10 years. About three and a half years ago, I felt like I needed another challenge.
I’d come out of a relationship that had left me feeling really broken and dejected. So I thought, ‘Okay, what can I do to add another challenge to my life and expand my career?’ So I contacted the clinical director of the rescue helicopter and he thought I’d be a good fit for the team.
I usually start about 7am. I come down to the base at Mechanics Bay, chat to the crew, and we do all our checks and make sure everything is ready to go. Then we do a morning brief where we sit down and talk about any things that might be going on during the day. We talk about the weather, what’s going on along the coastline and then we just wait for something to happen.
Our hotline goes off and we get tasked to a job. We could get anything, anywhere – it’s completely unpredictable.
Waiheke is big business for us because to get off Waiheke, you have to go on a ferry. If you’re unwell, there is only one way off and that’s by helicopter. We like providing a service for our Waihetian neighbours. It takes us just eight minutes to get to Waiheke. It’s really, really quick.
We bring some of the hospital to the patient because we’re set up like a resus room. We can do emergency surgical procedures, we’ve got ultrasound and blood is our big one which we are really proud of. We carry two units of blood, so we can take all that to the roadside and start the resuscitation before the patient gets to hospital.
At the moment, the Auckland Westpac Rescue Helicopter is the only service who carry doctors regularly and we are the only ones that carry blood. It’s been quite pioneering, with doctors on the choppers for seven years now.
The best part of my job would definitely be knowing when I’ve made a difference – you’ve relieved someone’s horrible pain
or been involved in saving somebody’s life.
The worst parts are the sudden deaths that we go to. People who have been out in the car, having a nice day, and in a split second, everything changes for them, their whanau and their friends. It’s just awful. Drownings are the worst. I hate going out to drownings. People are out having a nice day at the beach and again that life is just suddenly extinguished. You try everything and there is nothing you can do. That’s just gutting.
Sometimes it’s just too hard. I remember a child who had been run over in the driveway and my niece was the same age. The child died and I was devastated. It’s that strange thing between maintaining compassion yet also staying emotionally detached. It’s so hard.
Unfortunately, some of the most memorable moments are the big ones where there has been a major car accident.
You turn up, and it’s the sights, the smells and the sounds.
I did this great job where we had two women on a mountain near Raglan, in dense bush, and there was no way we could get the helicopter in. The fog was coming in, so we had to trek about an hour and a half with all our gear and packs into the bush to get her. It ended up one of the most fun days – not for her! – but we got to her to treat her and then carry her out, so it was an amazing day.
When I’m not at work, I just do regular stuff. I do CrossFit, which I started at the same time as working here because I knew that I needed to get strong. I want to be able to carry those 15kg packs up and down hills, and lift patients. You have to be pretty fit.
I don’t ever feel physically unsafe in the helicopter, even when it’s really bumpy and turbulent. We trust our pilots. Interestingly, I’m afraid of heights – if I go up a tall building and look over, I get really wobbly. And don’t ask me to go along a sky bridge that’s all glass! But in the helicopter, I’m like, ‘Oh, we are floating.’
It makes absolutely no sense in a situation that is actually really dangerous, being winched off the side of a helicopter is fine, but walking to the side of building where you’re not going to fall off, feeling really scared!”
As told to Fleur Mealing