Waching daily Dec 26 2017

Joan can you talk about who started the helicopter service, when it was started, and the motivation behind the whole thing

Sure, in 1982, November of 1982 is when this program started, we were the third in the

state, but it was still pretty new and the reason that we got our program started is

because of the vision and foresight of Dr. Frank Mitchell, who was a trauma surgeon at

University Hospital for many, many years.

He was a surgeon in the military and this was post World War II around the Korean War

era and he saw a lot of soldiers that were brought in wounded and saw firsthand that

if they were able to get from the field to an operating room quickly that lives were saved.

The primary purpose being that they needed the bleeding stopped so he and a bunch of

his cohorts determined that if this worked so well in the military and by that time it

was determined that it really was working why wouldn't it work in the civilian world,

so Dr. Mitchell established a trial program with highway patrol pre 1982 and it worked

so well that it was determined that we should have a permanent aircraft at University Hospital.

Kyle I'll start with you today, how many helicopters are in the Staff for Life Helicopter Service

and where are they located?

We have three in the program, one based here at the University, Staff 1, Staff 2 based

at Lake Regional Hospital in Osage Beach and Staff 3 is located in Lamont, Missouri over

between Sedalia and Whiteman Air Force Base.

How long does it take to get from the lake up to Columbia, Columbia to Jeff City some

of the areas around here.

From the lake to Columbia is about a 30 minute flight, based on the winds of course and

Jeff City is right about in the middle of that so about 15 minutes.

Who owns the helicopters and who provides the medical staffing?

I work for Air Methods out of Englewood, Colorado. We're contracted with the university

and the medical crew the nurses and medics are employed by the University Hospital.

So you guys provide both inter-facility and scene flights can you talk about the challenges

of a scene flight, the things you need to take into account and what makes them different

from an inter-facility flight.

Sure, pretty much kind of the unknown on what the landing zone is going to be like we get

information from the volunteer fire departments that are throughout the state, they do get

landing zone training so that they are knowledgable about how to set up a landing zone for us

and how to communicate with us once we get there to tell us what the obstacles and hazards are

and thats pretty much it as far as the difference between scene flights and inter-hospital

transfers. Inter-hospital transfers we kind of already know what the hazards are in the hospital

helipads so that the biggest difference.

Kyle what's the best part about being a pilot with a medical helicopter service?

If you ask any pilot they are probably going to say its flying since we love to fly, um

but the with the medical service its just an added bonus that we know that we're out

there doing our part to help people that are in need.

How has the helicopter service and just in general medical helicopters how have they evolved

in the 35 years since Dr. Mitchell started the program in the early 80's?

Yea great question, so when we started it was a one pilot one nurse deal

Pretty much across the country so you could imagine one nurse trying to deliver care

that now two people do so that was I think one of the biggest changes over the years

is that we added a paramedic which is absolutely the best blend that you could get.

The nurse brings emergency room and ICU perspectives to patient care

where the paramedic provides a field perspective so these two working together you've got it covered

In the beginning I think we were similar to just a flying ambulance we carried much of the same equipment

that ambulances did and what we offered primarily was speed, then we started to just advance

in technology and the things that we put on board and I felt like probably in the 90's, the early 2000's

we were well on our way to being a little flying ER, but today because of the technology advancements

I believe that we are really more like a flying ICU. We deliver critical care in the air that just did not

happen when this all started.

So we're going to go out to the Columbia Airport, we're going to land and we will show you guys

what it looks like in the back of the helicopter on our way back to University Hospital.

So Kyle if you want to talk about why we're going to go into sterile cockpit here for a second.

Yea, we have a general rule as we're working as a crew whenever we're taking off and landing

take off and landing is the most critical part of our flight so we need to be diligent on looking outside

of the aircraft and talking as a crew on only what we are looking at so that we're not distracted in any other way

so that we can call out all of the obstacles that we can see, and we do that all the way up until

our cruise altitude which normally doesn't take very long, but those are the critical times and we're talking nothing

about what's happening outside of the aircraft.

Aircom, Staff 1 down at the Columbia Airport

Staff 1 landed, Columbia Airport 1538

So Joan can you talk us through the capabilities of the medical care area of the helicopter here

Sure, so this is a cabin built for one patient this is the litter that the patient would be on

the head of the patient right here , the feet obviously down there, we have pretty much access

to the entire person if we need to have it but generally speaking we have a patient packaged pretty well

before we load them. Chris is in the airway seat, that's what we call the airway seat

so if during flight the patient has an emergency and requires an airway then Chris is in good position

to place that

What are some of the differentiators between our helicopter and some of the other ones in the area?

I think probably there are several thing that set us apart from others and one of them is the fact that

we carry blood. For years now we've been carrying two units of O negative blood onboard every aircraft that we have

and this is a universal donor anybody can receive 0 negative, on this aircraft we also carry

plasma which is extremely unique, that's a privilege we have just because we are at the University of Missouri

so blood absolutely saves lives people that are hemorrhaging and don't have time that are just

bleeding out that you need to get to the operating room we can help get them there and keep them alive until they get there

we also carry a little mini lab machine I guess for lack of a better way to describe it

this is called an Epoc and we can take a sample of a patients blood we put a little stick with

the drop of blood in this machine and turn it on, it does its magic and then within, what would you say Chris,

probably about a minute and a half to two minutes we'll get all of the pertinent lab information we need to

guide our care, APG analysis, electrolytes, and of course measuring their hemoglobin

and chromatic, which guides all of the care and treatments for someone severely injured or sick.

I think I will show you this ultrasound, because this is something that I don't know of any other program

in our area that is doing this, but this machine is an ultrasound machine and it actually gives us the ability

to put a wand on a persons chest and we can tell if the lung is down and if we need to do something to

bring a lung back up, we can look at blood flow to the heart to determine if the heart is still beating

we can look at their inner organs, their spleen or their kidneys or whatever to determine if there is bleeding internally

so its just another tool to help us to determine what kind of care they need and then to also alert

the hospital when we're coming in, they might need to be ready to go to the operating room

Chris, do you want to talk about the jump bag.

Our jump bag, or red bag or primary bag, its got many names, but its got all of the lifesaving

pertinent instruments onboard we need either at the bedside or out in the field on a scene response

its got our intubation equipment inside of it some of the decompression devices that Joan had mentioned

catheters of different sizes its kind of all of those lifesaving measures for your ABC's as they call them

so anything protect and save the airway, help with breathing and improve circulation

Justin, I want to point out the ventilator, this is an advanced ventilator that we use for patients that

need help with their breathing and so if we determine they just aren't breathing well on their own then

like Chris was talking about we put a breathing tube in, it attaches to this tube turn the ventilator on

and we put settings on it to give them the right amount of oxygen in the timing that they need it

but it's a great tool to have. This is our cardiac monitor that we use to determine what the patients heart

is doing weather we need to give them some electricity to get them out of a lethal rhythm or

use a pacemaker to get the rhythm on a regular basis

Sterile cockpit time