Sentara Nightingale flight nurse and pilot reach 3,000 flight milestone

Flight nurse Margaret ‘Maggie’ McCauley stands just four feet 11 inches tall. But she’s a giant among the flight team with the Sentara Nightingale Regional Air Ambulance, where she has amassed more than 3,000 flights over 26 years of service. 

Senior Pilot Joe Sherman has also crossed the 3,000-flight threshold since joining the program in 2008. Six other flight nurses and paramedics, and pilot Scott Nance, have each made more than 2,000 flights, representing considerable longevity, consistency, and safety for a program launched by non-profit Sentara Health in 1982, and based at the system’s Level I trauma center, Sentara Norfolk General Hospital.

“I love being there for a patient in their worst moment,” McCauley said of her work. “I love providing ICU-level care in flight, and I really love the aviation part.” She’s a former pediatric intensive care unit and neonatal transport nurse and flew with an air medical program in South Carolina before winning a coveted job with Nightingale in 1998. 

Sentara Nightingale flight nurse Margaret ‘Maggie’ McCauley has amassed more than 3,000 flights over 26 years of service.

The close-knit team of seven full-time nurses and 11 part-time paramedics come to Nightingale with at least five years working in intensive care units or emergency departments, or field experience with areas fire departments.

Once on board, they are steeped in all aspects of helicopter aviation, in addition to the intensive clinical work performed in flight. “I can’t fly the aircraft, but I can hold my own in a conversation with a pilot,” McCauley said.

Nightingale nurses and paramedics take turns riding up front with pilots on outbound flights. They operate the GPS, monitor the weather radar, and scan the sky for other aircraft and obstacles. With patients on board, both nurses are buckled in at the patient’s head and side, and pilots fly alone.

“Best job ever,” said team coordinator Lisa Scott, a flight nurse since 2013, who admits to a mixture of excitement and terror as she learned about aviation and began integrating into the cockpit.

“I kept telling people, 'I’m new,' for two years,” she laughed. More than a decade on, Scott has crossed the two thousand flight threshold and relishes all aspects of the job. 

“We have a lot of autonomy,” Scott said. “We have protocols from our medical director, but once we touch the patient, it’s all on us.” Scott said close teamwork relieves some of the pressure. 

“We’re all better as a team,” said Ryan Howard, a flight paramedic for just over a year, and a firefighter/paramedic in Newport News for 17 years.

“The Nightingale program began the year I was born,” Howard said. “When I was a kid, my parents took me to a community event, and Nightingale was there, and I thought it was the coolest thing. After I went to college and joined the fire department, I got serious about being a flight paramedic. I could have applied to other programs,” Howard said, “but I wanted an opportunity with Nightingale. People wait a long time to work here.” 

Howard took a 16-week ‘Future Flight Crew’ program at his own expense to enhance his chances. He joined Nightingale last year. He’s past training and probation and is a full-fledged member of the team. 

“I have a lot to learn,” Howard said, “but it’s great to lean on people like Maggie and Lisa and learn some of what they know.” Howard said Nightingale’s safety record, single aircraft, and small team attracted him to the program.

“We’re like a family and we look out for each other,” he noted. “I have two small kids, and safety is important to me.”

Safety is on everyone’s lips at Nightingale, especially senior pilot Joe Sherman, who flew helicopters for the Air Force and Coast Guard and the offshore petroleum industry before joining Nightingale.

“Aviation is the priority,” Sherman said. “We can’t help anyone if we don’t get there and back.”

Sentara Nightingale pilot Joe Sherman previoiusly flew helicopters for the Air Force and Coast Guard.

Sherman notes he has never felt pressure to fly in any situation that did not feel right. Sentara’s not-for-profit mission plays a role in the lack of pressure, but Sherman also credits the program’s bedrock focus on safety.

“We check our egos at the door,” Sherman said. “We expect each of us to perform to the best of our ability, for each other and our patients. Because we’re so much like a second family, people join Nightingale and they don’t ever want to leave.” 

As long-time team members begin to retire, Sherman says one challenge is integrating younger nurses, paramedics, and pilots into the program while maintaining Nightingale’s 43-year record of accident-free operation, and its team culture of safety first and constant learning.

Here is a light of Nightingale team members who have passed 2,000 flights. (Numbers can change with each 12-hour shift):

• Pilot Joe Sherman (3190) 
• Pilot Scott Nance (2246)
• Flight Nurse Margaret ‘Maggie’ McCauley (3227)
• Flight Nurse Chris Cannon (2064)
• Flight Nurse Lynn Manning (2090)
• Flight Nurse/Team Coordinator Lisa Scott (2083)
• Flight Paramedic Chet Flemming (2618)
• Flight Paramedic John Tucker (2076)
• Flight Paramedic Jim Laing (2059)

About Nightingale: Owned by Sentara Health. Operated by Metro Aviation, Shreveport, Louisiana. First flight: February 1982. Current aircraft: 2011 Airbus Eurocopter EC145. More than 25,000 accident-free patient flights since program inception. Record: 862 patient flights in 2022. IFR capable program with nine IFR routes to frequent regional destinations.