The Center for Medical Transport Research (TCMTR) will hold its annual Safety Story Workshop from Oct. 22-24 in Denver. With help from the Center for Digital Story Telling, TCMTR will bring together air medical professionals who will again share their stories about coming a razor's width from "buying the farm" — pilot parlance for ending up in a body bag.

These tales can then be accessed online. A number of stories are posted already at www.tcmtr.org. If you haven't already seen them, it's worth a look.

Unburdening like this is nothing new. Go to your nearest Twelve Step meeting and you can hear addicts verbalize all matter of offenses. Likewise, pilots have been confessing their transgressions in aviation magazines for years in a variety of columns, all with variations of the same theme: "I was stupid and lucky, but here's what you can learn from my mistake."

Lately, the seal of the confessional has also applied to "no reprisal" aviation safety meetings. Humans learn faster by sharing the collective's experience.

But the "safety stories" go beyond this. First, they are aeromedical specific. Second, they are professionally put down on video, with scripts, images, music and sound effects that are emotive, haunting and even a little disturbing.

It's one thing to read about accidents in this business; quite another to be emotionally pulled into the moment by those who lived through the experience. To hear their voices tremble. To listen and comprehend the horrible aftermaths. To perceive the anxiety even when the story has a happy ending. It makes a bigger impression and is seared into your brain across the senses.

What comes through louder than anything else in these stories is the stuffed fears air medical crews live with every day — most of it the result of arrogance amplifying danger. A lot of this falls on the pilots: Not getting weather briefings before takeoff, continuing to fly into dicey conditions, and verbally abusing crew members who voice concerns.

The policy may be "three to say 'go,' one to say 'no,'" but the pilots are still really driving the train. It's apparent that in too many operations, crew resource management remains more theory than daily practice. And the consequences can be dire.

Listen to former flight EMT Danny Kelly talk about flying into the soup, being in a helicopter that is out of control, and what came next: life in a power wheelchair in a rehabilitation hospital.

Or the simple plea of flight nurse Susan Nichols after being ostracized for raising safety concerns: "I wanted to feel safe. That's still all I want."

Listen. You might learn something.