Survivors Network assists crash survivors with PTSD

Group helps flight nurses resume ‘life of purpose’
Health: Survivors Network assists crash survivors with PTSD
ZACH SMITH
Staff writer
Published August 20, 2012

As her emergency medical helicopter began to plummet after losing power while lifting off with a patient from an Olympia hospital, flight nurse Krista Haugen couldn’t help thinking “not again.”

One month earlier, three of her colleagues at Airlift Northwest were killed when their helicopter crashed into Puget Sound near Edmonds.

With their memorial services fresh in her mind, Haugen was left to consider her own mortality as she fell from the sky.

The Oct. 28, 2005, crash from 70 feet above Providence St. Peter Hospital totaled the aircraft, but everyone made it out alive.

For Haugen, however, the effects would linger in the form of post-traumatic stress disorder and would eventually lead to the end of her career as a flight nurse.

“It proved to be pretty overwhelming,” the 44-year-old Gig Harbor resident recalled last week. “It’s not what the aircraft looks like post-accident; it’s what happens in your mind.”

Though PTSD cut short one part of her professional life, it led to the start of another: She helped form the Survivors Network for Air and Surface Medical Transport.

Last month, she was honored with the University of Washington Tacoma’s Distinguished Alumni Award for her work as co-founder and chairwoman of the Survivors Network. She earned a master’s degree in nursing from UWT in 1998.
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