|
|
Sunday, September 5, 2010 |
Serving Seguin and Guadalupe County since 1888
|
|
|
Marketplace
Sections
Services
Service Center
|
|
 |
|
Helicopter medics keep Seguin safe
Published June 24, 2007
GUADALUPE COUNTY — Any time of the day, emergency first responders can be called to the scene of a major auto collision. A paramedic on the ground can tell within seconds there are life-threatening injuries, and there is precious little time to spare.
Fortunately for Seguin area residents, a fully-equipped mobile intensive care unit built inside a Bell 430 helicopter can be on the scene from the New Braunfels Municipal Airport within seven minutes.
Medically-trained flight crews are able to load up to two patients and be on their way to one of three acute trauma hospitals in San Antonio, just a short distance in the air versus transport by ambulance.
Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, San Antonio AirLife flight crews staff three helicopters, ready to fly as far as 150 miles to respond to a medical emergency.
“Each individual call is unique. Trauma is always bad, the people who get hurt weren’t planning to have a wreck that day,” Jorge Treviño, an AirLife flight nurse for the past nine years, explained.
Treviño was on duty Friday at the New Braunfels Airport in Guadalupe County, which has served as an AirLife base for the past four years.
Greg Winters, AirLife paramedic since 1995, and helicopter pilot Andy Olesen of Air Method were also pulling duty at AirLife’s New Braunfels base. Olesen was a helicopter pilot for the U.S. Army in Vietnam, and was in town recently as a roving pilot to fill in for a pilot who was on vacation.
“You can see Seguin when you take off from the pad, it’s seven minutes flight time,” Treviño said.
San Antonio AirLife transported 200 patients from the Seguin area in 2006, half of them from the scenes of accidents. AirLife also transports patients from Guadalupe Regional Medical or McKenna Hospital in New Braunfels to hospitals in San Antonio. The three acute trauma centers are Brooke Army Medical Center, University Hospital or Wilford Hall (the latter is scheduled to shut down in about 18 months).
Other hospitals in the San Antonio area maintain cardiac cath labs for heart patients that might need emergency intervention to save their lives.
Winters said that after the emergency scenes he has witnessed, he would rather fly than drive.
“All you need to do is wear your seat belt or put in a car seat, that is what is most frustrating and tragic,” Winters said.
He said the most frequent cause of auto-related injuries are drunk drivers, people not wearing seat belts or children without car seats, and “people driving crazy.”
McQueeney Volunteer Fire Department Chief Tim Bogisch said he has called AirLife to accident scenes 10 to 12 times a year.
“They provide an excellent service. We can tell within 20 to 30 seconds whether we’ll need them. We even put them on standby before we get to the scene,” Bogisch said.
The chief also said that since an AirLife helicopter was stationed in Guadalupe County, flight arrival times have been shaved from 20 minutes to five minutes.
“The New Braunfels base has been a huge help from our point of view. They’re five minutes from anywhere in McQueeney. Sometimes they have to hover while we establish a landing zone,” Bogisch said.
San Antonio AirLife originally was founded as Baptist AirLife in 1990 when the Baptist Health System hired Wayne Hilliard, a retired Army Medical Service Corps colonel and a hospital administrator by trade, as the president and CEO of the non-profit company.
“I started work on Sept. 1, 1990, and our first day of flight operations was Jan. 1, 1991. Our second patient was a transfer from McKenna Hospital in New Braunfels,” Hilliard explained.
The first day in AirLife’s existence was uneventful, with seven patients transported. In January 2006, AirLife transported 307 patients.
Before AirLife was born, the San Antonio area was served by Military Assistance to Safety and Traffic units from Fort Sam Houston. The MAST helicopters were the only medical airlift providers for the civilian sector until AirLife was founded. The MAST unit was transferred away from Fort Sam Houston during Desert Storm, and AirLife was the only game in town for about a year-and-a-half.
Hilliard said air medical transport via helicopter dates back to the Korean conflict in 1950. Hilliard worked with the MAST unit when it worked out of Fort Sam Houston.
“They had been at Fort Sam for 20 years prior to AirLife being born. The initiative was to build positive relationships between the military and their civilian counterparts,” Hilliard explained.
University Hospital signed on as a partner in June 1994, and Baptist AirLife became San Antonio AirLife.
“The basic contingent was one aircraft operation staffed 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. In 1994, they brought in a second aircraft and added a second 24-hour crew.
AirLife recently replaced its Bell 412 helicopters for smaller and faster Bell 430s, capable of flying at a speed of 143 knots.
Hilliard said AirLife’s new helicopters are more fuel efficient and cost less to maintain. They are equipped with more modern avionics, and the ride is smoother and faster, making transport more comfortable for patients. The only tradeoff with the 412s is that the older machines could transport four patients, and the new 430s are limited to two patients.
“We’re one of the busiest programs in the country. We had a 100 hours per aircraft per month flight time average in 2006. Our program is never down unless the weather grabs us,” Hilliard said.
When AirLife first began operations, there were 20 employees. Now it is up to around 80 with very little turnover of its flight nurses, paramedics and flight communicators.
“When we have an opening, they are highly sought after, and it’s not unusual to have 50 to 100 applications, we are looking for the creme de la creme, the top performers for a demanding role,” Hilliard said.
To qualify for a flight nurse, an applicant must be a very experienced nurse with at least five years of critical care experience. A flight nurse generally has about 17 years experience, and paramedics have about 15 years. They must be able to expertly administer medical care to increase a patient’s chance of survival.
“AirLife is something you don’t realize you need until you need the service, you don’t even think about it. When you do need it, it needs to be there,” Hilliard said.
For flight nurse Greg Winters, being an AirLife crew member is not about making lots of money.
“It’s a challenge for the use of your skills, and you have a lot of autonomy,” Winters said.
Any given day, an AirLife flight crew stands ready to respond to medical emergencies in Guadalupe County, but Winters said he would prefer it if he did not have to meet a lot of residents in the area in the line of duty.
“Wear your seat belt, you don’t want to see us,” he said.
Share |
Save |
Mail |
Print |
Comment
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|