NAME: DR Ellen Slungaard, PHd
ROLE: Lead Aviation Medicine Physiotherapist, RAF
FAVOURITE AIRCRAFT: Typhoon FGR4
TWITTER BIO: @eslungaard
What is your role in aerospace medicine?
Lead Aviation Medicine Physiotherapist for the RAF
How Did You First Get Interested in This Field?
Previous civilian experience rehabilitating professional rugby players following neck injuries and G training with motor racing drivers led to me work with some Typhoon aircrew in 2006, prior to joining the RAF. I found their environmental demands fascinating, whilst they still had the professional athlete attitude that my motor racing drivers and rugby players had.
HOW DID YOU GET INVOLVED?
I joined the RAF as one of the first physiotherapists when the RAF Physiotherapy branch reopened in 2010 & was posted to RAF Coningsby. I designed the Aircrew Conditioning Programme* there and on posting to the RAF Centre of Aviation Medicine as the first RAF Research Physiotherapist, evaluated its effect on aircrew performance as part of my PhD. The ACP is policy for all aircrew in the RAF now but I still haven’t quite sorted out all aircrew neck issues yet!
*A health and fitness programme for aircrew, focusing in particular on neck strength
WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN FIVE TO TEN YEARS?
Working with ESA and if I’m still in the military, Head of the Academic Department of Military Rehabilitation.
WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO THOSE WHO WANT TO FOLLOW IN YOUR FOOTSTEPS?
Keep learning, don’t be afraid to ask the awkward questions and get involved with the flying squadrons on your base (if you are with the military).
What IS ONE OF YOUR FAVOURITE MOMENTS IN AEROSPACE MEDICINE SO FAR?
Whilst it’s not solely an aerospace medicine moment, one of my favourite aerospace moments was Helen Sharman becoming Britain’s first astronaut on 18 May 1991, joining the Mir space station. As an impressionable 13 year old, she showed me that science was cool and I could be anything I wanted to be. As she said in an interview earlier this year ‘If you don’t try something, you’ll never know what might have happened.’