What is Aerospace Medicine?

Aerospace medicine concerns the determination and maintenance of the health, safety, and performance of persons involved in air and space travel.

Aerospace Medicine, as a broad field of endeavor, offers dynamic challenges and opportunities for physicians, nurses, physiologists, bioenvironmental engineers, industrial hygienists, environmental health practitioners, human factors specialists, psychologists, physician assistants, and other professionals.

Those in the field are dedicated 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, for those embarking in their exploration.

Areas of interest range from space and atmospheric flight to undersea activities. The environments studied cover a wide spectrum extending from the microenvironments of space to the increased pressures of undersea activities.

Increased knowledge of these unique environments of “Spaceship Earth” helps aerospace medicine professionals ensure participants are physically prepared, physiologically safe, and perform at the highest levels.

Careers:

Aerospace medicine focuses on the clinical care, research, and operational support of the health, safety, and performance of crewmembers and passengers of air and space vehicles, together with the support personnel who assist operation of such vehicles.

This population often works and lives in remote, isolated, extreme, or enclosed environments under conditions of physical and psychological stress. Practitioners strive for an optimal human-machine match in occupational settings rich with environmental hazards and engineering countermeasures.

Aerospace Nursing:

Aerospace flight nursing is concerned with air evacuation/transport of critically-ill and acutely injured patients in military and civilian settings. Specialized training is needed since the sites of evacuation, variable stability of the patients, and the limitations of transport care present challenges.

Flight nurses are involved in many phases of medical launch support for the space program, as well. Medical certification, post-landing assessment, and emergency procedures planning and execution, represent only a few of the functions for which their expertise is essential. They also contribute to the activities of hyperbaric support for wound care, toxic exposures, and decompression sickness in diving and flying communities.

Most trained military flight nurses are in the Air Force, either on active duty or reserves, with the remainder employed with the Air National Guard. Though training requirements can vary, the Air Force generally requires the completion of an accredited nursing Bachelor's degree and their flight nursing program (6 weeks).

Exhibit Information:

All paid registrants receive complimentary online access to the scientific session recordings. Online content includes speaker audio synched with presentation slides. All files can be streamed or downloaded. Non-registrants can purchase access to the presentations and paid registrants can upgrade to a thumb drive containing all presentations by visiting.

Source: Event Website