What is a Flight Surgeon?
A flight surgeon is a doctor with training and knowledge in aviation, space medicine, and aeromedicine. Flight surgeons provide medical assistance to astronauts and aviators in preflight training exercises for proper preparation and remain in contact with them during flight to help maintain their health throughout longer duration flight missions. The number one objective for the flight surgeon is to be certain that their aviator is physically and mentally fit to perform in the extreme conditions that flying encounters. Beyond the medicine, it is also a major responsibility to advocate for safe environmental conditions for the aviators and astronauts in preflight testing or in flight. When a medical problem does occur, the flight surgeon provides the necessary medical care whether using telemedicine for astronauts in orbit, treating a preflight condition or giving a routine medical evaluation and certification to determine flight readiness.
What is Aerospace Medicine?
Aerospace medicine involves the determination and preservation of the health, safety, and performance of persons involved in air and space travel. Aerospace medicine offers dynamic challenges and opportunities for physicians, nurses, physiologists, bioenvironmental engineers, industrial hygienists, environmental health practitioners, human factors specialists, psychologists, and other professionals. Those in the field are devoted to enhancing health, promoting safety, and improving performance of individuals who work or travel in unusual environments. The environments of space and aviation provide significant challenges, such as microgravity, radiation exposure, G-forces, emergency ejection injuries, and hypoxic conditions and many others. The environments that are studied cover a wide spectrum, from space and atmospheric flight, to even including undersea activities.
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