Air Med One (continued)

Our rotor wash swept the asphalt road clean as we landed three hundred feet south of the wreck.  I grabbed our airway bag and Cindy, the resident MD, stumbled out of the aircraft after me, trauma bag in hand.  I looked back to check her progress out of the aircraft just as she stumbled and nearly fell.  This is going to be a long day, I thought.  The incident scene commander was a crusty, seasoned old guy chief of the volunteer fire department.  The “whop, whop” of the aircraft behind us beat time as I approached him.  He stood in the roadway with his clipboard in his hand.  “OK Chief!” how many patients do you have for us?” I asked. He looked visibly shaken and replied with, “Eighteen victims.” I glanced behind him to the scene spread out on the road: a van, the glint of metal in the sun and a yellow tarp covering what was the driver’s door of the truck.  Sobering at best!  “OK, let’s get started.”  I looked back for my partner and found her hunched ov

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Air Med One

“Air Med One you’re responding to an MVA incident, multiple victims, with Sheriffs rescue and Air Med Two for MCI in progress.”   I am on duty on Air Med One today with a new, green partner a second year Emergency Medicine resident who has seen very little of the “real world.”  A little short staffed, my new partner, Cindy, is pressed into service and is about to be baptized in a dose of reality.  Our pilot is a very experienced medevac veteran who knows exactly what we’re going into.  He shoots me a knowing look as our pagers alarm with the dispatched call.  Yes, I know, the thought hits me as I look back.  This is going to be rough. The county of San Diego has a sophisticated system of trauma management that was developed to give the best care available to traumatically injured patients.  The county is divided into catchment areas where patients in those regions are sent to designated hospitals for urgent treatment.  The trauma hospitals in those catchment areas

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