KU School of Medicine-Wichita

Embark 2017

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5 Crew 1 Pilot, 2 Medical Crew Capacity 1 Patient Eurocopter AStar AS350 Crew 1 Pilot, 2 Medical Crew Capacity 1 Patient, 3 Passengers Beechcraft King Air 90 FLIGHT PLAN KU EMERGENCY MEDICINE EagleMed's missions range from lifesaving to mundane. "Sometimes it's an accident, sometimes it's an organ transplant, sometimes it's just that their condition needs to be managed somewhere else," Dobson said. Like many aspects of emergency medicine, a shift often involves sitting around waiting for a call to come. "They told me to bring some homework," Robinson said. And there's the chance that no call will come during the shift. "Our school has a mission of training doctors for rural Kansas, and air ambulance is an important part of that," Dobson said. "If we send a patient to a different facility, we need to know what that entails. Before the ride-along, I had no idea how much the EagleMed crews were capable of. It's just the two of them. They can't pull in help from down the hall." "I plan to work in rural ERs, and I know I will be sending patients to larger facilities for care," she said. "Now I have a mental picture, not just something I read, of what that involves; and I have the confidence of knowing that my patients will be in good hands." Confidence and collaboration Autumn Smith, a third-year medical student from Lewis, plans to practice in a rural community and the ride-along illustrated skills she will need. "It emphasized to me the necessity of making a quick decision. From the time of the call, it is going to be up to two hours to pick up the patient." "I got to see the collaboration between teams," Smith said. "I got to see people prepare the patient and the transport in the ambulance, in the air and then to the hospital. All the while you are working with a patient who is sometimes anxious. The continuity of care was amazing. The experience clarified what happens in between the sending and receiving hospitals." took them to the local hospital. There, the EagleMed crew consulted with the local care team and prepared the patient for transfer by ambulance to the aircraft. The flight went smoothly, and the EagleMed crew and Dobson went with the patient for the handoff to the care team at the destination hospital. Earlier, Dobson had seen the pilot make the many calculations involved in each flight, factoring in distance, weather, fuel, crew flight hours and the weight of patient, parent, Dobson and crew. As they finished lunch in Oklahoma, dispatch called with another assignment. "The pilot crunched the numbers, and saw that he would time out on duty hours, so we weren't able to take that one."

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