The Helicopter Air Ambulance Identity Crisis: Blending Aviation and Critical Care Part 2 | Ep 66

Welcome back to the Valor Flight Crew Podcast, hosted by ECHO and brought to you by Vertical HeliCASTS and Valor Plus.

In today’s episode, we are joined again by researcher, educator, and seasoned flight paramedic Russell Griffin for a thought-provoking conversation about the powerful connection between identity, culture, and safety, in the air medical world.

Together, we explore what really shapes safety culture inside high-risk organizations—from the policies written on paper to the behaviors crews live out every day. We dive into how personal identity, professional background, and organizational expectations influence decision-making, communication, and crew dynamics in both aviation and healthcare environments.

This episode takes an honest look at the challenges of blending aviation and medical cultures, the critical role of crew resource management, and why humility, vulnerability, and open dialogue, are essential for building strong teams and safer operations. It’s a conversation about leadership, accountability, and understanding how the culture we create directly impacts the care we provide and the risks we accept.

So strap in, check your gauges, and join us as we lift into another conversation focused on safety, culture, and the people behind the mission.

Thank you to our sponsors Metro Aviation, Precision Aviation Group and Technisonic Industries.

Transcript

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In today's episode, we are joined again by researcher, educator, and seasoned flight paramedic Russell Griffin for a thought-provoking conversation about the powerful connection between identity, culture, and safety in the air medical world. Organizational identity really is that shared understanding of who the organization is, right? So I can ask you the question, right? So, like, who are we at work? Like, what's your organizational identity? You would answer that question from your oneness, like how connected you are to your organization, right? So when you have a strong organizational identity in the social sciences world, we would say that you identify with that organization. But for that to be true, you actually have to know what the answer to that question is. Like, what is your organizational identity? Welcome back to the Valor Flight Crew Podcast, hosted by Echo and brought to you by Vertical Helicast and Valor Plus. Together, we explore what really shapes safety culture inside high-risk organizations, from the policies written on paper to the behaviors crews live out every day. We dive into how personal identity, professional background, and organizational expectations influence decision-making, communication, and crew dynamics in both aviation and healthcare environments. This episode takes an honest look at the challenges of blending aviation and medical cultures, the critical role of crew resource management, and why humility, vulnerability, and open dialogue are essential for building strong teams and safer operations. It's a conversation about leadership, accountability, and understanding how the culture we create directly impacts the care we provide and the risks we accept. So strap in, check your gauges, and join us as we lift into another conversation focused on safety, culture, and the people behind the mission. Thank you to our sponsors, Technosonic Industries, Precision Aviation Group, and Metro Aviation. Welcome to the Valor Flight Crew Podcast. Brought to you by Vertical Helicast, produced in partnership with Echo, every coast helicopter operation. The Valor Flight Crew Podcast promotes the personnel and life-saving equipment behind helicopter air ambulance services. Join hosts Mike Fidelity and Blake Drider for in-depth interviews and expert insights from air medical personnel, pilots, communication specialists, and maintenance crews who play critical roles in airborne emergency response. Guys that flew off the coast of UK and like did, you know, incredible zero visibility, you know, nightmare IFR flying all the time. And, you know, like just aviators in general of all types. And then I take like a 30-minute online weather introduction course. And then now we're supposed to be able to communicate about my concerns for aviation diversity. Wait, you got a weather course? Oh yeah. I mean, like really? I mean, I'm not trying to know there's organizations that do more than that, and there's more hours, and yeah, I know we will probably talk on the CRM and other parts about that. But you know, I might do enough familiarization with the aircraft to know how to turn the batteries off, to shut down the fuel, right, to disable the engine, to locate the ELT to activate it. But is that anywhere near an appreciation for the thoughts, feelings, and expectations that a pilot's experiencing? And I'll tell you one of the best examples I ever saw. And the same is true for our fellow clinical staff, regardless of which way you're melded together, right? Um, and I mean, I I think as a paramedic and having not been a nurse, I'm married to a nurse. That makes me very credible for speaking. Yeah, exactly. Amen. I can later, let's hear this now. I want to apologize to you for all of us and how we've treated you because I can only imagine my God and what it's like to come out of the hospital world and then the like collide against people like me. Uh so yeah, early in my career is probably not so pleasant. Uh later in the career, really good, I think. But no, I mean, like honestly, the way that work gets done inside of a hospital is so principally different. And and going to paramedic school and doing 10, 24-hour shifts isn't gonna bring you on that journey, right? But I I digress, but anyways, like creating the environment where these folks can come together and do more and do better is tricky. And I'm gonna tell one of the many, many great palettes I worked with over the years. I love it, took me years to sort of understand this, but every briefing, he said, I am the pilot in charge. Every shift, and it's like, yeah, I mean, like, he's like, I'm the pilot in command. Let's go to the daily briefing. And it and it was true. I mean, like at the point where we're flying, like he is the operator in charge. He wasn't trying to assert his power or his authority over us, but he was helping me understand that yes, it is ultimately his accountability. We are all sharing it, we are all responsible, which means response able, right? Responsible, responsible. We share accountability where we shared responsibility of helping to facilitate that process. But it was no question in my mind that, like, yeah, I need you to obsess about the safe operation of this aircraft. With that being said, uh, you said responsible or response able. Yeah, is there now a a bigger layer or another another trunk to unpack of the responsibility? Because there's been a shift, right? Because we like as medical crew members, we are still now part of a flight crew. In the military, right, you have a flight crew. There's crew chief, you know, I don't know, I've never been, but you have a pilot, co-pilot, crew chief, hoist, you know, you have other people that have that shared responsibility. So now in the civilian world, in patient care or health care associated with a helicopter, right? Like, why doesn't that same principle almost exist when I'm on a ground ambulance? You know, like if if I have three people on a crew, if if I am the if I started off my day saying I am the lead paramedic on this ambulance, if I'm doing something wrong, there should still be a responsibility or response able person to say, hey Blake, maybe you shouldn't do that, or hey, I noticed you were kind of sleepy. Maybe you need to reevaluate or maybe take a break. So we we do that, or we have changed in the air ambulance world or hems to train medical crew members to be a flight crew member that we have more it's more than the 30-hour weather course or 30-minute weather course, right? And we've had a couple other things, but now I have a responsibility now. Okay, I guess two things. Is that defined when you look at these NTSB reports? Because the pilot failed to, but did the crew fail to mention something or say something? And then so why is there differences between like the delivery mode in which I bring a patient to the hospital? They're both equally important. I have a human life that I'm tasked with taking care of. Why is there a difference? And these structures or characteristics to how we do that role. Why is it so vastly different? And how do we enforce that and make that better? Yeah, it's uh that's a that's several questions, and I'm glad you asked it because I think they're central to this. Um, the first one is when we look at it from an industry perspective, there's a tremendous amount of heterogeneity, right? Look at the different types of program operations, the different models. If you go back into the 70s and the way we even got into this sort of business, the the idea of how we partner aviators and aviation operations with hospital employees in the initial days, right? And then we have full-on, you know, part 135, hiring the medics, nurses, and pilots together. And then we have nowadays like public safety models, right? Where we have a third-party provider working with a public safety entity, not even necessarily a hospital. I mean, you have all this so much heterogeneity that I think that just makes this so confounded that it's really, really difficult to try to break those apart from an industry perspective. And I and I don't know what the right answer is from that lens. And I can certainly see where there is almost a functional barrier that's going to exist in some of these organizations, especially if you're in one of these places where I mean, guys, I grew up in the generation of self-loading luggage, right? I mean, that that was there's no confusion about it, right? Yeah, I mean, that's not, and I I'll assure you that still persists in some environments. So I don't know how to functionally get beyond that except at and solely at the organizational level, right? So I like I can't fix that as an industry champion or advocate. The industry has to regulate itself. That's a whole other conversation. But I will say at an organizational level, if I'm a CEO or if I'm a you know chief light nurse or whatever it is, this leading organization, I definitely have the ability to help shape and reshape that. To the point about the differences between the ground and the air, I think it does come back to sort of raising this. Well, what are the expectations? What's the organizational expectations that we've placed on those employees so that they know they're not only responsible, but they're enabled and empowered to be able to take action. Right. So I shared with you earlier that I have three sort of like operational expectations. So if I was to build a flight program from scratch today, here's a few of the things that I would put above all else. So I would not have core values of like integrity and trust and you know all this sort of stuff because that yeah, that's true. That sort of is an expectation. I would have number one, do the right thing. That's behavioral, operational expectation. Number one, do the right thing is basically an ability for me to be able to tell our employees that we understand that judgment is more important than compliance. Policies don't cover and have the ability to inform every situation that we're going to face in this extremely austere environment. And what I mean by do the right thing is you might need to break a policy or break a violation in a sense of doing something that is just, you know, and and that's something that is tricky. In retrospect, we should be able to say we were placed in an almost impossible situation. We made the best decision we could, and we feel confident that we can defend making the right decision, right? It doesn't mean you were right, it just means that that's like do the right thing. I want to be able to be inspired by that. So that that's the first one. The second one is gonna be, and you're gonna think this is crazy. Uh, treat others the way you want to be treated. Period. Like that's I don't even know how to say it. You want the golden rule, yeah. It's so basic. But if you want to drive behavior, it and and I say these, they're tremendously value in retrospect, right? You deal with any inter-crew issue, communication, personnel issue, you can pose that question, right? Did you treat somebody the way you want to be treated? I mean, it's a the conversation's over. And that doesn't mean that they're wrong, it just means it's like a point of like, maybe I shouldn't do that because I know I'm going to be held to that standard and I'm gonna be asked that question. And then the last one, which is I think where we miss, everybody goes home. I would make that an actual operational expectation. We talk a lot in our industry about the mission of our organization exists to rapidly transport and compassionately care for patients that are critically ill and injured, and to ensure that every employee and patient we provide care for goes home. Yeah. Can can I just throw this out there, Russell? And and I think this is like the most perfect point because those three things apply in any field, you know, like it it shouldn't matter, but I think as we talk about this in this this healthcare, it someone asked me this recently. I and I'm I'm using this as an example. I'm a field training officer, and I'm gonna uh thousand percent tattle on myself. Someone asked me, hey, what's the SOP for this? And I'm like, I don't know. Like, I'll I don't know, but let's look it up. And and I started thinking, and I think I said to this person, this was this was a new employee that was doing a a ride along with me, and I and I just flat out said, look, I don't know these by memory or by heart, but the way that I try to approach it is if it seems the the right thing to do, and it seems to be uh what would be what's best for the patient, like that's how I would look at it, you know. Like I don't know exactly what that what that SOP states. And I don't know, like I felt so I felt like I was like, boy, do I really suck as a field trainer? Like, am I just like not getting it because I don't know this by heart, but but I think in general, like what really sets true good leadership apart out there, I think, and and brings this into perspective is like you said, if an organization I I like to think that the the organization that I work for doesn't expect me to know the black and white verbatim, but they do expect me to do the right thing, treat others the way they should be treated, and ensure that everybody goes home. Thank you to our sponsor, Technosonic Communications. Technosonic Communications is a proud provider of the critical airborne communications equipment utilized every day on every mission. Law enforcement, EMS, forestry, federal, and military operators all trust their communications to technosic. Visit TIL.ca to learn how technosic can support your mission communications. And that I think they do. I can answer that yes, that they do, because that's how I show up every day. I don't know what SOP206 subsection A B, whatever says, right? No, I don't know that, but I think I at least inherently, one, I know how to find the answer. I'm gonna preface that. And two, I have material that I can easily access on multiple devices. But also three, I think inherently most organizations or or companies design I don't know if that's the right word, Russell. You you'll you'll have a better word to describe it, but maybe they develop the policies around one of those or all three of those uh values. I I'm actually gonna get a placard made with that on it. And uh don't worry, Russia, I'll give you credit at the bottom of the code. Oh, absolutely. Uh I think everybody quote Russell, like these are the three things to live by. I want no authorship credit, and this is why people live. I mean, not honestly, it's um so I'm gonna take it out a little rabbit hole because that maybe it helps. If and this is where I think maybe being at you, obviously you're both tenacious and curious people, and by proxy, your listening audiences, and that's a plot goal, and I think it's phenomenal. And I encourage people to embrace it. I think one of the first questions you got to ask is where does policy even come from? Like, where does this idea of steerage like and boundaries exist? And so if you go all the way back to the industrial revolution, you start to look at how work has expanded and grown, um, honestly, you know, and there's a lot of different paths you can take on this, is to control people, right? It's makes sense. I mean, like it's and I'm not trying to be cynical, but that's realistically it. So you could you could take two approaches. If we were to start over with the industrial revolution, you could say that we're gonna uh recruit, engage, and enable our employees through behavioral expectations on how to conduct work, or we can give them a bunch of policies that are gonna guide and put boundary conditions on how to conduct that work, or you do both. And that's where most of us are at. We we do a little bit of both. But that's where you hear me talk about, and and I'm not one bit uh shy to say it, that's safety theater, right? That's policy theater. If an organization believes that by having the most robust safety manual, by having all of these policies and practices, by conducting annual CRM, by having all these rules is what's making you safe. Oh my, it's such a miss. That's not true. Safety is a behavioral aspect, right? And we can you can basically interpret that any employee at any given time is referencing almost 600 points of data to inform a decision. You're talking about your policies, you're talking about your protocols, you're talking about all the components that have been baked together inside of your orientation onboarding manual. And many times they sit like in contradiction to each other, right? I mean, it's it's you end up in this, like, I think we're supposed to do this, I think you're supposed to do this. And if you work for an organization where the medicine side of the house is in this office and the aviation side of the house is in that office, it's even more complex. Because if they aren't coordinating those points of data, right, if our crews aren't building the weight and balance manifest together, if we're not talking about how a balloon pump isn't only just this, but it's also that, right? It's it gets just so so tricky. But I that that's where I do think I want to help create an environment where organizations realize you have a burden as an organization to clarify your operational expectations and ensure that dumb people like me have information that I can quickly rely on to guide my decision making, right? Because if we end up disciplining these people, that's a whole other conversation. But I think it's important. This is this is really key to me. I believe that when we discipline safety violations, right? And I'm talking about even some of the more egregious ones, when we discipline them and even worse, separate them from the organization, we're reinforcing a culture of silence and we're taking away the operational opportunity to learn from that experience. That is the opposite of what we consider to be a restorative culture. A restorative culture would be one where we take those opportunities, we turn them into learning moments. And it's not to like shame or place, you know, prejudice or judgment on whomever the violator or violators were. But if an organization cares about that person they've invested in to recruit, train, hire, employ, and have on board, and they make a dumb decision. Yeah, I could if you intentionally hurt somebody, that's not what I'm talking about. But if you do something stupid, you set an opportunity to go, hey, look, this happened, this happened, made this mistake, it didn't turn out good. I want everybody else to know and talk about it. So we don't do that again. Right. It's a tricky space to get to. That's really where I hope we can be. It is, and I and then I I disagree but don't disagree at the same time. So it in in regards to while I I think that policies are a necessary evil to have, right? I don't know that I've ever read a policy and been like, this is groundbreaking information to me, right? I've never read a safety manual and said, like, oh my God, this is like I I never would have thought of this before, right? Like this is this is common sense stuff in a lot of regards. That if you put the if you put the groundwork out there to say, these are the expectations I have for you for your behavior or for how you're supposed to carry yourself or for the care that you're supposed to provide, and and you provide those tools necessary, I feel like the policies often fall into place. But then I take off that crew hat of like saying I've never really been awed and amazed by a policy, and I put on that leadership hat of saying, Well, now someone has not done something the way that I've expected them to. I have to have something to hold them accountable to. Because I feel like there are two separate avenues to that. I feel as though most of the policies that we have out there are pretty basic. Like I I I can go in there and follow your three principles of do the right thing, treat somebody the way they want to be treated, and everybody goes home, and your policies fall into place. But when they don't quite fall into place, do I agree that discipline is always the answer? No, absolutely not. That's not the case. But there are times where that has to become the case. And if you don't have that policy to back the decision you're making in that situation, then from a organizational perspective, it makes that very difficult. Oh, well, that's an interesting observation. I like it. So that's a so you're raising a huge point. So I think and I want to make sure I I understood this correctly because I think it's tremendously valuable. The policies are also a reference point, right? So we can say okay, for clarification and expectations, we do know that you actually, you know, I don't try to pick something. Um you don't need to be in the aircraft smoking cigarettes while we're refueling, right? Or something like that. Wait, that's bad. Yeah. Well, you need to stop that blake. Yeah. If if management's in the office, it is at three o'clock in the morning and right, yeah. Full setup. So I mean, so that way whenever somebody does happen, you can go, look, come on, y'all brain dead, what are we doing here? This was clearly a policy, and then we can then we can use that to hold them accountable by saying, you know, policy two of the six words says don't do that. One of the things that's interesting about that is when you think about the kind of origin of policies, they're a lot like contracts. And what you're bringing up here, and this is what I would say from my friends who are attorneys contracts are only made for when things go wrong. Right. And then and and I think in that sense, and so in that sense, it's okay. It's okay to be able to reference and go, it's nice to be able to have a point that we can reflect on. And clearly, in this space of aviation, tightly regulated, there's going to be like a profound amount of policies and things that just need to be required by law to have in place. Not not pushing back against that. But the the trick is how finite does it have to become? Oh, sure. I worked for an organization that had a policy on the script that we already use on answering the phone. Yes. I mean, anybody else agree with that? Yeah. Man, you're man, you're hitting home in uh like one of my first jobs in the in my adulthood of how I had to answer the damn phone. I mean, where's my where's my autonomy in that? And so it in some ways there there really isn't like a a rightness. I said to the very beginning, I have no motive to be right. What I do think is that we can't allow policy to surrogate management and leadership. And in many instances, in my experience, I've seen that happen, right? I can go to bed tonight as a manager, knowing that there's a four and a half inch policy manual at every base. It's a matter of where these policies are coming from when they're written, right? So is this policy coming from a place of you will do this because this is the expectation, or is the policy coming from a place of you're encountering a different situ a difficult situation? Here is a guide that can help you figure out the right thing to do. But is a policy a guide, Mike? It should be. Maybe. I mean, yes, we have our SOPs, right? So there are certain things we have to do. But I think that there can be those guidelines and those SOGs instead of those SOPs. Thank you to our sponsor, Precision Aviation Group. Mission critical operators and fleet managers rely on Precision Aviation Group as a worldwide leading rotor and fixed-wing MRO provider. PAG provides tip-to-tail solutions in four MRO segments: avionics, components, engines, and manufacturing DER services. A single point of contact gives you access to over 150 million in inventory globally 24-7. Just call 800-537-2778, Precision Aviation Group. Others sell parts, we sell support. True. How how you label it or word it, but Russell, you just talked about how uh some of these are because of, like you said, contracts, right? The SOPs are the contract, you know, like when we talk about the legality of things, and I think that bridges this topic one step further. And we're not only do you try to bridge aviation and health care, but then health care and legality, you know, that's a whole nother topic. But but Mike, you use the word discipline, okay? And and I think about this. This is something that just drives me nuts. I'm a grown-ass man. Kind of, maybe by age. Are we sure about the thing? Like, maybe by age. But I think about it, right? They say, Oh, I'm getting in trouble. No, you know what? You discipline your child, right? But Russell, you use the term well now. Now I can't think of it. Was it restructuring or re-restor? Restore, restoring that that's the word, right? So if I'm the employee and I'm like, all right, I'm gonna get in trouble. Like, if I get disciplined or I get in trouble, like that's what happens to me in like sixth grade, you know, because I didn't get my my homework done on time, right? So and and maybe this again, this is my identity growing up, you know. Like, I'm not talking about the gentle parenting or you know, you get your butt beat, you know. Uh, but it's it's all about like we're adults, right? But we're humans, and you look at the choices that are made. Mike has six cookies, I have three cookies, I also want six cookies. How do I get to have the same amount of cookies that Mike has? Do I go to the store and pay for it? Do I or do I get the money because I worked hard? Did I get allowance to be able to do the same thing? So it's all these choices, and naturally by human instinct, we're gonna probably take either the easier way, or do I take the the correct way? And what's the correct way? Was I taught the correct way? I have to work hard for it, or do I just expect that I should have the same amount of cookies that that Mike has? And I bring that up because the word discipline just uh it just hits me in such a different role of like I'm a grown person, you know, like abiding by these three things do the right thing, treat others the way you want to be treated, and then everybody goes home. Well, maybe restorative I don't know, reflection or you know, re-implementing or kind of saying, no, these are the things that we expect, and this is how you get there, but there's gonna be different ways to get to that same avenue, but following the same path. And I I think that's a good point, Blake. And you know, to rebuttal to it, I I don't know that I have uh necessarily a different word for it. I feel like from whether you're talking about leadership from a uh crew level, you're orienting someone, whether you're talking about leadership from a base lead perspective, whether you're talking about it from a chief position, from a manager position or director level, I feel like as long as you're leading from a place of respect and understanding that we all have the same here's that favorite word, Russell, mission at the end of the day, right? Um, that we we all have that same mission that that I think if you're leading from that place of respect and understanding and expectation that that is what everyone is is here for, right? That's why we want to do this job, that that's where I say the policies kind of write themselves. That's where the guidelines write themselves. And that it's for when those things are blatantly ignored, is where there has to be something else. And and maybe discipline isn't the right word, right? But I don't know that I have a different one off the top of my head. Or maybe it is, you know, and that's the thing, maybe it truly is because humans make different choices, you know, and and and I don't know, Russ, so maybe this is that that question. So when we talk about the culture and how it plays into these roles, like you said, you're the chief uh flight nurse, you're the chief flight medic, you're the chief of the organization, or you're the uh clinical leader, right? Or you know, what area leader, you know, whatever the terminology is. Like, how does that get to the point where because you know that we we know the long as long as you do this job, people are gonna do dumb things, you know, like that's just naturally gonna happen. And and it's it's not unique to this industry. People are just gonna make a dumb decision, and Mike, like you just pointed out, someone blatantly does that. Like, how do you handle that situation? Is it discipline? Is it restorative? How do you use your identity? How do you use this culture? How do you do that to embrace discipline, restore, and move forward? Man, this is gonna be fine. All right, we get excited here. So, this is a really good question because we're not in a position where we're opening a new organization, right? And we can like start from scratch and do everything right. Most of us have been in or are in leadership positions and management positions, or you know, obviously the rest of us are not, but you ask the question about well, how do we actually affect that? How do we drive change? In many instances, I've seen over time that managers are it's so the principal difference is you manage processes, you lead people, right? And I don't know how many organizations are even good at articulating that. We just promote people and we don't even explain that principle to them in a lot of cultivations, right? And so if you don't understand that, if this is a primary accountability of leadership, most of us at work would just like to know what the expectation is. Like, like, help me understand what the expectation is. That only comes through being present, through having conversation, through dialogue, through not taking espoused values and making them become enacted, right? It's not through the policy review, it's not to the online modules, it's not through orientation. And that's really tricky because if you're in an organization where maybe that hasn't been your MO, and maybe you've been a little bit like leadership absent, right? You're really management present, I mean like super management present. Did you close all your charts? No, all right. Well, close your charts or you can't go home, or you know, like whatever, right? I get it. I totally been there, yeah. But it's much more squishy to go out to a base and say, Hey, you know what? One time, true story, I might have been in the back of an ambulance. This is a while ago, guys. We used to have clocks on the walls of ambulances that were like taking hands on them. Okay, and and we were told to put a clock in the ambulance, and we had uh some nails, didn't have a hammer, so I might have used a life pack 10 battery to. I mean, naturally, what else would you go to? Yeah, what are you gonna do? And you know, it made sense. I'm like, whatever, it's sturdy, and of course, my supervisor walked around the corner and sees me hammering a nail into the wall of an ambulance to hang a clock with a life pack 10 battery. Uh yeah, clear moment of discipline, right? But I wasn't disciplined. Fortunately, that person was a great character and leaned in and said, Come on, like, what are you doing? Like, did you think through that? But I was like, No, I didn't, you know, and we had like honestly a five-minute conversation of I could write you up for this. That's totally like you're damaging equipment. This is just stupid. Like, what are you? And I was like, Man, I don't know, dude. I was just thinking, you know, this is a long time ago. And I was like, Yeah, I could have gone over the toolbox like 50 yards of that way and grabbed a hammer, but I didn't. I don't I don't know what I was thinking then. This was like 25, almost 30 years ago. But I walked away from that conversation, kind of leaning towards how I get to this stuff about do the right thing, right? Because what I can now say in hindsight is that was not the right thing to do. And I was just being lazy and being stupid and didn't want to go do it. And it's like I understood that, like, don't be lazy. We had this conversation around the expectation of like, you know, do the right thing, like, come on. Yeah, yeah. I want you to take care of our stuff like it's your stuff, right? You're gonna be safer and happier and at a better place, not only if you do that, but if you know other people are doing that. And it's a crazy thing to confess, it's a true story, but I I do think that that's one of the things we have to do is we have to actually live these virtues. We have to talk about them. We have to be able to recite things like our mission statement and talk about our operational principles in a way that people don't just see them as something that's in the corporate office when you first walk to the door. But there's something that I can anchor in in my day-to-day behavior, and that's and there's not a right answer to that, but it is a you got to start somewhere. And that's that's really tricky to do, especially if you've been on a path that maybe isn't as connected. I don't know what the right word is there, but what could feel vulnerable that can be very, very difficult, right? And the people are gonna be on to you if you start doing that, but that's okay. Would it have made a difference if that person walked over with the hammer and handed it to you? Probably would have thrown it back out. Yeah, because at that point I'd be like, bro, you saw me doing this, like you took the time to go get the hammer. I'm I'm just curious, though, like did did it stay on the wall then, or did you have to did it come down or did it stay up? Let me let me give you the other end of that spectrum. Is that okay? Can I tell you a different story? Yeah, I was on the crew, and the people that were involved in this no longer work for the organization. You know, I won't say which one it was, but we had a windshield that required a re-clue. And so at probably one o'clock in the morning, we flew from a remote base about 20 miles away down to a central maintenance facility, a hangared indoor maintenance facility. And my mechanic came in, did a reclue on the windshield, and the cure time was six hours minimum. Uh, the maintenance facility didn't have a crew rest area, right? I mean, like, you know, there's chairs, but not like a lazy boy. I mean, like folding chairs, right? Uh, and at this point, it's like 1:30 o'clock in the morning, right? So as a crew, like AOC was, you know, in bed or whatever, the flight operations center is doing their thing. As a crew made a decision to get, you know, a crew car and we're just gonna drive back to our base 25 minutes away. And like, hey, let's go get rest for like four hours, whatever. We'll get up at 5 a.m. and be back down here within the I mean, you can't fly it, right? Uh, before the cure time ends. And when we show back up the next morning, uh, you know, like the one of the lead lead people there were like, what are y'all doing? Like, I would pick pick up our aircraft. Well, you you there's a policy, you never leave the aircraft ever. Like you never leave the aircraft. I'm not exaggerating, right? And so we're like, what are you talking about? So the the pilot was disciplined. Wow. I mean, I'm not exaggerating. What it wasn't like it's not not a bad organization, it's not a bad person, right? It's just uh it's a paradoxical situation. I mean, they're like, Well, we've had it in the past where crews have left aircraft, and it's like it's locked up inside of our own maintenance facility. Like, yeah, uh help us understand. They're like, Well, it's it's on principle. The principle is you're not supposed to leave the aircraft. And I mean, it was like for the most it was one of those moments that for me, the nurse and the pilot was a profoundly disenfranchising experience from the organization. I know it sounds weird, but it's true. That's how we felt. We felt like I no longer have right this identity with the organization. Thank you to our sponsor, Metro Aviation. Metro Aviation, the world's largest family-owned aeromedical operator, offers comprehensive aircraft services with 160 plus aircraft in over 25 states. The completion center installs medical and law enforcement kits in avionics, serving diverse aviation needs including offshore, utility, VIP, and corporate sectors. Those kind of situations uh end up being difficult, right? So should it have been a discipline thing? I don't think so, but you know, at the same time, does it warrant conversations or at least an understanding of both sides of the story? And I think that there's an absolutely attached to that question, right? Um but I think a lot of it comes back to those three core values. And if if if the crew members were not doing anything, if you guys were not doing anything with any malintent, you were trying to make the appropriate logical decision in that situation, it's hard to fault you for that, I would think. And I think that that was a good opportunity for you three as a crew to have that CRM in place to be like, this is what makes the most sense for us in this moment at this time in this situation. And I think that you know, when we talk about our identity and culture, because I know we kind of got off topic a little bit here with things, which was great discussion, but like to bring it back around to the identity and culture side of things, when we talk about crew resource management, I think that there's a lot of variety depending on who you're working with that day, what your dynamic is. I mean, I know when I go to work and certain partners I have, I know that we're gonna have this kind of a day, and not because of the patients we're gonna encounter, those are oftentimes the same, but because of the dynamic that we have working together within that. And so, how much would you say that CRM factors into someone's identity and and does the identity of that crew with their CRM make them safer? Does it make them different in that situation? And and what are what have been some of your uh experiences with that along the way? Yeah, it's a great question, and I think it's really key. So, I mean, I I don't know, I haven't been in a CRM class in probably six years. Um, and I was in, of course, Randy Main's class, you know, years and years ago and did it annually. And I think there's a few different ways to look at this. Um, number one, like CRM definitely is better than no CRM. So the training itself, and God bless Randy and others, uh, who along the way put together CRM and AMRAM because I think it's been really helpful. The earliest uh versions of it were a lot of like crash and learn, you know, like sort of like don't screw up like they did. No criticism. That's just the way the curriculum was, and you know, saw a lot of really nasty, kind of gnarly aviation accidents, and they were like, because they did this and because they did that. That is absolutely not a surrogate for helping individuals be prepared to communicate as a tightly knit crew, is to actually sort of say the juxtaposition of like, well, don't do this. Well, then what exactly do we do? Well, depending on the CRM class, the facilitator, the duration, is it a checklist thing or is it actually something we're trying to integrate? That's the question I think that becomes key. It and what I mean by that is if CRM is an annual competency, whatever, eight-hour course, and everybody gets like, you know, pushed through it, versus is CRM like an actual integration of the two? Are we doing an annual course and then are we doing quarterly refreshers? Are we building scenarios off those? How else are we applying the principles of CRM? Because in many ways, they're just like a pair of pliers in your toolbox. And the effectiveness of those pliers are going to come through the quality of your introduction to them and how we all get to understand and work them. And I think that's where a lot of organizations can easily fall flat on the benefits of CRM and being able to take those tools and resources and being able to help apply them, especially if you have breakdowns and identity and actual culture and behavior within the crews, right? So, I mean, if that's already kind of disparate inside the organization and that disconnect is there, then CRM in those instances, many times is just a checkbox. I mean, it's not even actually behaviorally exhibited. You can recite it, right? You can take the test, but that's where I do think many of these things come back to the okay, well, how do we actually apply these skills? What are the ways that we're going to do it? So here's the scenario, right? What are we going to do about that? How are we going to talk about it? And that really where I hope over time the CRM can be able to address things. Like we all learn, like, oh yeah, speak up, right? Speak up, speak often. Okay. And then in my research, I think we probably talked about this last time, there are more pro-social barriers or concerns that I have with about how you're going to perceive me that suppress my willingness to speak up and speak often. Absolutely. Because we haven't talked about pro-social concerns. We haven't talked about the fact that if I do say something that's probably just or right or cautionary, I might actually threaten my social status with you or with the company. And I don't want to do that. Yeah. But we don't talk about that. We don't talk about the like, how are we going to battle as a team? We talk about the actual like application part. And I think that's a whole other space to get into. And and I mean, I I can only imagine as a uh, you know, we're like most pilots and and paramedics, we come from like 40 grit sandpaper. But if you're a nurse, come from 600 grit, you know, maybe I see you. I see. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Mike's just 120. Mike comes from 120 grit. Yeah. But but I think so that just to kind of bring some of them what we've been discussing together here and and talk about an example from um from my career that I've experienced. And so I think you you you think of the uh the upbringing, right, of pilots, especially our military pilots. You think of the upbringing of our paramedics, especially those that, you know, maybe are running city systems running, you know, 10, 12, 14 calls a shift kind of thing, right? Like tones go off, you go. Somebody calls. You got a mission, you go, you get in the aircraft and you go. And so it's that con that's that upbringing. And it's those years of like, you know, this is this is my duty to go and do this, right? And and so I think that becomes part of their identity at the end of the day. That becomes part of who they are as a pilot, that becomes part of who they are as a paramedic. And I think that on the nursing side of things, we still have that, right? Like I still have that duty to go and take care of my patients. Uh, but now coming out of the hospital environment and coming into this crazy world of aviation on top of it, and this different environment of how I'm caring for those patients, it sometimes makes me think about things a little bit differently. And so where I bring this back into is, you know, you have this, and I think as a whole, whether you're a pilot nurse or medic or respiratory therapist, being in this in this world of helicopter air ambulance, you do have that sense of duty. You do have that call and you do have that desire to go out the door and take care of these patients. I think what the challenge is sometimes and where the CRM may make or break that aspect of it is when you're faced with those difficult situations. I can think of certainly a couple of times in my career where the the situation has come up of it's an IFR night, uh, we're gonna have to land at an airport. The patient is got X, Y, or Z going on with them, so it's gonna require intermediate transport, which maybe that's anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes to get to or from the hospital, plus the transfers, right? And so that can that can play out one of two ways. That can play out where you have a pilot that automatically accepts the flight because hey, we can fly, we can go do this. And your med crew is sitting back saying, Yeah, but what about is this the right thing for the patient? Right? Or then you have that situation where the three of you make that determination together to figure out what the best option is for that particular patient. And maybe ground critical care is the better option based off of location and and you know, weather concerns or inner, you know, multiple moves for that patient or or what have you. And so I think we've all kind of been faced with some similar situations like that along the way where it was like we have that identity, we know what we are here to do and want to do, but we have differing opinions on how we're going to accomplish that task, right? And that's where the CRM has maybe made or broken those situations to be able to uh kind of um affect the overall culture of that crew, right? Uh maybe I'm saying not saying that the right way as far as using all of those terms, but I feel like those are how a lot of those things maybe come together. Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Valor Flight Crew Podcast. Don't forget to like and subscribe to hear more stories that promote the personnel and equipment behind the missions in public safety aviation. Lastly, stand by for a message from our sponsors. Thank you to our sponsor, Metro Aviation. Metro Aviation, the world's largest family-owned aeromedical operator, offers comprehensive aircraft services with 160 plus aircraft in over 25 states. The completion center installs medical and law enforcement kits in avionics, serving diverse aviation needs including offshore, utility, VIP, and corporate sectors. Thank you to our sponsor, Technostonic Communications. Technostonic Communications is a proud provider of the critical airborne communications equipment utilized every day on every mission. Law enforcement, EMS, forestry, federal, and military operators all trust their communications to Technostonic. Visit TIL.ca to learn how Technostonic can support your mission communications. Thank you to our sponsor, Presticision Aviation Group. Mission critical operators and fleet managers rely on Presticision Aviation Group as the worldwide leading rotor and fixed-wing MRO provider. TAG provides tip-to-tail solutions in four MRO segments: avionics, components, engines, and manufacturing DER services. A single point of contact gives you access to over 150 million in inventory globally 24-7. Just call 800-537-2778. Precision Aviation Group. Others sell parts. We sell support. Thanks for joining us on this episode of the Vower Flight Crew Podcast. A huge thank you to Russell Griffin for sharing his insight, experience, and honest perspective on the human side of safety culture and identity. Conversations like this remind us that safety is never just about policies, checklists, or procedures. It's about people. It's about the culture we create, the way we communicate under pressure, and the willingness to stay humble, speak up, and keep learning from one another every day. Whether you work in the cockpit, the cabin, or behind the scenes supporting the mission, we hope this discussion encourages you to reflect on the role identity, leadership, and teamwork play in the environments we operate and in the patients we serve. As always, thank you for being a part of this community and for everything you do to keep your crews, your patients, and yourselves safe. Until next time, take these conversations back to your bases and keep challenging each other to define your identity, refine your culture, and elevate your safety margins. We'll see you next time on the Valor Flight Crew podcast.