Are you a flying physician?

The AME community is getting older, and more and more examiners are retiring. The average age of AMEs went from 56 years old in 2003 to 62 in 2020. Some AMEs only do exams on certain days, and others limit the number of exams they will perform each week. All this leads to a shortage of examiners.

About 320,000 flight medicals are conducted across all classes annually. Fifty-five percent of AMEs do 50 exams or fewer, but about 10 percent do more than 300 per year. The majority of AMEs are in primary care, but there also are representatives from almost every specialty in the ranks.

Why become an AME? I can say from many years of doing pilot exams that they are the best part of my workday, mainly because I can talk “airplanes” while providing a needed service. The examination is not difficult to perform, but FAA guidelines need to be followed, and the required paperwork—which now is all computer-based—can be frustrating. There are also requirements for routine diagnostic equipment to be in the office. The AME is a valued part of the aviation community, and there are potential tax advantages to being an AME.

To become an AME, the initial step is to contact the regional flight surgeon’s office for your area. The regional flight surgeon determines if there is a need in the area, which there almost always is, and an application is filled out. Once the application is approved, then the physician must attend a five-day course, which is generally held in the FAA’s Civil Aerospace Medical Institute’s facility in Oklahoma City. In addition to the course, there is a tour of the facility, which has everything from a toxicology lab to a model commercial aircraft cabin to crash test dummies.

Whether one flies a light sport aircraft or heavy metal, being an AME adds to the aviation experience while providing interesting insight to aerospace medicine.The course covers routine examination techniques and the uploading of data on your computer. The course also covers various medical standards and disease protocol decisions which vary from “OK to issue” and CACIs (Conditions AMEs Can Issue for specific medical problems) to deferrals to the FAA for special issuance consideration. A three-day refresher course must be taken every three years, but it can be taken online every other three-year interval.

Special issuance preparation for the pilot by the AME is probably the most difficult part of the job, but it is also particularly rewarding when a pilot is granted a special issuance because of the AME’s help. The AME’s main job in this process is ordering any special testing and organizing the data and medical records.

Although AMEs charge for exams and some charge extra for special issuance assistance, only the ones who practice near major aviation training schools or airline hubs see enough pilots to support themselves just from aviation medicine. Most AMEs do the exams to help their fellow pilots.

An AME can apply for senior status after one year of successful service as an examiner. Only senior AMEs can perform first class medicals, which are required for the airlines and other situations. The major difference between a first class medical and lower class medicals is the requirement for an ECG one time at age 35 and annually starting at 40. AMEs now scan and transmit the ECGs, which is a huge improvement over the procedure of direct transmission by telephone of past years.

AMEs can also be designated to examine air traffic controllers. The major difference is the controllers are required to have an audiometry exam as opposed to the whisper test required for pilots.

HIMS AMEs are even more rare. HIMS stands for human intervention motivation study, which is a left-over acronym for the original program to get pilots who had a drug or alcohol problem back in the cockpit. The program has been very successful, and for lack of a better place to put them, pilots on antidepressants are also under the HIMS program. To be an HIMS AME, an additional course must be taken to obtain the certification. The paperwork and number of interactions to certify the HIMS pilots can be daunting, but can also be incredibly rewarding.

Whether one flies a light sport aircraft or heavy metal, being an AME adds to the aviation experience while providing interesting insight to aerospace medicine.

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