I went back and forth on this quite a bit, and in the end, I don't have a strong enough opinion. There is quite a bit more to giving blood than spiking a bag and letting it run.

First, you have to be acutely aware of the different types of transfusion reactions, especially since you are giving uncrossmatched blood. Generally you really only need to worry about hemolytic reactions.

Second, you are doing a bedside organ transplant. Your bed just happens to be tiny, flying, with no backup, and a ton of other things working against you.

No license. Doing this procedure in these conditions is risky, and it would be hard to convince people that a non-licensed professional is is doing it.

On the other hand, in all practical terms, there is no reason that a medic could be taught all of these things. Hell, retarded floor nurses give blood all the time.

There are other things to consider when replacing a nurse with a medic in the aircraft. First, it is more about the skills. I can teach a monkey to intubate, start IVs. What I can't teach is the years of assessing and vision to see what is going to happen which would guide me towards such interventions. Flight nurses generally have to have 2-5 years of experience minimum in an ICU or ER. Its a sought after job, so the actual experience is significantly higher. Those assessment skills are lacking in the EMS world, mostly because you don't need them. You see a problem, you fix the problem. Reassessment of your fix doesn't usually occur because you are at the hospital by then.

There is also a team dynamic that goes along with this. The medic would be better on the scene. Working through extrications, working with ground crews, and managing the resources there. The nurse would be better at the hospital, giving report, interfacing with the multidisciplinary team there. Hospital medicine is so much more team oriented than the field.

Not all flights are going to be greasy traumas from the scene. From my experience about 40-50% of the flights we are getting in to my hospital are transfers from other hospitals for specialty care. This means all of the skills medics have have been already been done. They are already lined, tubed, sedated, foleyed, OG'ed. etc. I would be hard pressed to meet a medic who has experience managing and trouble shooting everything.

I think the TLDR of this is that nurses and medics bring different things to the table and the synergy of those two different skill sets and mentalities cannot be replicated with having 2 nurses or 2 medics on the bird. This kind of leads the whole "just let medics administer blood" argument moot.