Emergencies on airplanes

I've slowly been writing about my experiences over the summer and the following occurred on one of my flights. This post was originally written in response to a thread about helping in medical emergencies as a doctor and if such interventions make a difference in patient outcomes:

About half an hour into the flight they asked for a doctor, nurse, or anyone with medical experience. A little while later the plane took a hard left to divert for "an unexpected landing" as they called it.

(This was a foreign airline so most announcements were in a language I didn't understand with English translations lasting a fraction of the original announcement. So I only have a bare-bones understanding of what really occurred.)

Either no one was available to help or no one volunteered because the flight attendants were the only ones providing medical care to the passenger. I was asleep and awoke to the sudden turn and "unexpected landing" announcement, which scared the crap out of me because I thought we were going down, until I saw the oxygen tank attached to an unconscious dude being carried down the aisle.

All in all, I don't think a doctor or medical professional would've changed the outcome for the passenger since the guy was hooked up to an AED ("No shock advised" numerous times) and CPR was being performed with an hour still left to our emergency landing (we were over water). At that point, the flight attendants were doing all that could be done with the limited resources found aboard an airplane and more training on their end wouldn't have made a difference.

I'm applying to med school now thus I'm not a doctor but I've been in EMS for 6 years so I'm familiar with emergencies in weird places. I like to think I would've volunteered had I been awake and no one else had been available. But I don't know.

What's worse is that the guy didn't suddenly die. He had some sort of medical emergency that eventually led to cardiac arrest so maybe even my basic assessment could've helped him in some way. And had this happened on land, with the 30 minute lag between the first signs of medical trouble and cardiac arrest, he maybe would've made it.

But since we were airborne, there's really not much anyone could've done in that situation with such few supplies and such a long transit/landing time to higher level care.

In short, a plane over water is most definitely the worst place to have any kind of medical emergency.