FLIGHT NURSE CELEBRATES 27 YEARS OF SKY-HIGH CARE
Kelly Forman, who signed on in 1995 with Mercy Air, reflects on Nurses Week
This week was special for San Diego-based nurse Kelly Forman, for a number of reasons.
“It was such a great trifecta: It was Mother’s Day, it was my anniversary for work, and it’s Nurses Week — you just can’t get any better than that,” Forman said.
On May 8, 1995 — 27 years ago this week — Forman signed on as a nurse with Mercy Air. Forman is a flight nurse in what is best described as a f lying intensive care unit — an air ambulance that serves San Diego and the surrounding communities via helicopter.
Forman says her unique role in nursing is the prime example of the reality that nurses can be found anywhere — from homes to doctor’s offices to hospitals and even to the skies over our heads. And regardless of where they are, they all are on the front lines of health care every day.
“Wherever you are in the nursing spectrum, it is an opportunity to really make an impact on somebody’s life,” Forman said. “Especially postCOVID days, the nurse has taken on a tremendous role. They’re definitely your caregiver, but they’re also a social worker, they’re your newest family member.”
National Nurses Week runs from May 6 through May 12, the birthday of Florence Nightingale, a 19th-century nurse credited with being the founder of modern nursing.
For Forman, who is now one of the most senior nurses at Mercy Air, the weeklong celebration is always a special time to reflect on her more than three-decade career.
“I can’t ever remember a time not wanting to be a nurse,” she said.
“When I was small, my mom said it was that or a belly dancer — and I think I chose well,” she added, jokingly.
After getting her nursing license
from Southwestern College, Forman started her career at local-area hospitals before pursuing her passion for aeromedical transport.
“I wanted to be there since the television show ‘M.A.S.H’ got a fire inside of me,” she said.
In 1989, she joined Life Flight, San Diego County’s first emergency medical helicopter service in operation in the 1980s and 1990s, which merged with Mercy Air in 1995.
Although she took on other roles for a time, Forman has been back on the flight line as a flight nurse for the last decade, wearing a patch on her flight suit that identifies her as the “godmother” for the past 27 years.
With much of the same equipment on board as a hospital emergency room has, Mercy Air helicopters work as an extension of every on-the-ground emergency facility and ICU in the community, Forman said.
Whether transporting patients from hospital to hospital or responding to the scene of a remote trauma or accident, Mercy Air’s crew typically handles the most acutely and critically ill of patients.
“Sometimes you have to get people to the hospital even quicker than going by ground, and that’s where our resources really are very, very crucial and helpful,” she said. “We cut the transportation time in half ... and get (patients) to the very best care.”
Mercy Air also works directly with UC San Diego,
training medical residents as active crew members.
Over the years, Forman has helped train nearly every UC San Diego resident since the start of the program. It’s an experience that she says comes full circle when she sees some of the residents she helped train now on the job at each of the health care centers where she lands.
Forman’s job can be harrowing — not just because of the stress-filled environment caring for some of the most critically ill patients. In December, an Aeromedevac medical transport jet crashed outside El Cajon, just 1.5 miles from Gillespie Field — where Forman’s own helicopter is based — killing the two pilots and two nurses who were aboard.
Even so, Forman says the chance to help countless families on some of the worst days of their lives is invaluable.
“It’s the most incredible thing that ... people will give me their child with every understanding that I’m going to take care of them just like they were my own family and do the very best that I can for them,” Forman said. There’s a “heartfelt love and responsibility that goes along with (having) to take care of somebody else’s most special person.”
And it’s a feeling Forman says many nurses agree makes the challenges worthwhile.
It “gives you a tremendous amount of self-worth,” she said. “You come away (thinking), ‘Holy smokes, I really did make a difference.’ ”