NORTHFIELD — Pioneer Valley Regional School was visited by land and by air Thursday as the Baystate Health Life Star helicopter, Northfield Fire Department and Northfield EMS arrived to speak with students in the introduction to medicine and emergency care classes.
School health and wellness instructor Ernest Abramian invited the medical professionals to speak to students about their jobs and the required education and training. They heard from Baystate Regional EMS Director Kevin Clark and members of the Life Star helicopter crew.
“Aside from being experienced and being able to make good, quick decisions, it’s about understanding the whole scene,” said Chrissy Bonin, a registered nurse and Life Star paramedic. “It’s understanding what the closest hospital is and what the patient needs. Am I able to get the patient what they need in an appropriate timeframe?”
The helicopter crew consisted of Bonin, registered nurse and paramedic Trishia Lohan, and Amanda Fouche, the pilot employed by Air Methods. Thursday was, coincidentally, the first time they worked together as an all-female crew, they noted.
Northfield Fire Chief Floyd “Skip” Dunnell III said the Fire Department assists in clearing the landing zone for the helicopter. It makes sure to communicate with the helicopter crew as it makes an approach, to warn if there are any wires, light poles or other hazards in the area. Members of the Fire Department also assist in getting the patient from the ambulance onto the helicopter, Dunnell said.
Bonin and Lohan outlined the basic equipment layout in the helicopter, which doesn’t allow for a lot of free space. In addition to the main doors, the rear end of the helicopter (beneath the tail) has two doors that open to load and unload a patient on a stretcher. The paramedics carry a stretcher, along with necessary medication and equipment.
“We have over 53 medications on board, and we have a lot of advanced airway management tools,” Lohan said.
The crew carries a video laryngoscope, which allows the paramedics to see inside a patient’s trachea to search for blocked airways and where to insert a breathing tube. Lohan said if a patient has a pneumothorax (or collapsed lung), the helicopter crew has the appropriate needle tools to decompress the air in that patient’s chest. The crew also picks up medications from the hospital.
“Today we had someone on a medication called propofol, something that would keep them sedated,” Lohan said. “We have to know a lot of medications, even what we don’t carry.”
In response to a student’s question, Lohan said some of the most common incidents the crew responds to are trauma-related accidents. This includes motorcycle and car accidents. They have also been called to assist with falls at the Farley Ledges in Erving and other areas that an ambulance cannot reach. The crew said they also respond to calls for strokes and heart attacks, Lohan said.
Patients will often be checked into their local hospitals after recognizing early signs of a stroke or serious heart attack. They may then need to be transported by Life Start to a hospital with a stroke center.
“Just because you get injured here in Northfield doesn’t mean you’re going to end up in Greenfield,” Northfield EMS Chief Mark Fortier said. “The best destination is where we’re going to try and get you to.”
A major limitation for the services the crew can provide is space-related, Bonin said. It is difficult for the helicopter paramedics to conduct CPR on board, and ideally, Lohan said, they get a patient out of cardiac arrest before they transport them. According to Fortier, paramedics can do everything a hospital is capable of during the first 45 minutes of responding to an incident.
“The one thing we can’t do in the field that the helicopter can is a thing called rapid sequence intubation,” Fortier said. “If I have a patient in the field that needs that intervention, I will call them specifically to have them come intubate the patient so we can get that airway established. That’s something these guys can bring to me that I don’t have in the field.”
The crew also needs to account for a person’s weight and size distribution in the helicopter. Bonin said the helicopter that landed at Pioneer can handle approximately an additional 300 pounds, and other aircrafts in their service can handle more weight. The crews evaluate what they need on a case-by-case basis.
In some instances it may not be appropriate to fly a patient, for a variety of reasons. If this happens, the crew stays with the patient and assists as they can. Bonin said paramedics do what they can to get a patient where they need to go, and sometimes this means jumping in an ambulance.
Lohan said there are other instances where they may arrive on scene and are unable to save a patient. Should this happen, they call the local hospital to pronounce death.
Zack DeLuca can be reached at zdeluca@recorder.com or 413-772-0261, ext. 264.