GRAHAM — A medical transport helicopter landed on the Graham High School softball field Tuesday, May 28.
Duke Life Flight registered nurses Caroline Cox and Matt Sanders, and pilot Mike Hill, were greeted by a group of Public Safety Academy students eager to find out what it’s like to work on one of two Duke University Hospital choppers.
“So what a typical day looks like for us is we report to work at the Johnston County Airport and it’s kind of like being on call,” Cox said. “We show up, get all of our stuff, check off our equipment, and we have our radios, and our operations center stationed at the hospital at Duke will let us know we have a call.”
Traveling at 150 mph, the crew typically flies to small, rural hospitals that don’t have the ability or equipment to care for a particular patient. Occasionally they’re required to fly directly to the scene of an accident.
“We have anything in the back of this helicopter that you could need to take care of a patient,” Cox said.
“It’s the same things that you would find in an emergency room or ICU. We have equipment to put in breathing tubes, to put them on a ventilator, we have stuff to start IVs and administer medications through an IV, we have blood to give blood transfusions … so we’re not just sitting there looking out the window the whole way. We’re actually taking care of the patient.”
They work in 12-hour shifts, which can be both physically and emotionally draining.
Sanders said the hardest calls are those involving kids or severe motor vehicle accidents.
According to a 2017 report from the N.C. Department of Transportation, nearly 128,000 people were injured in motor vehicle crashes in North Carolina that year. About 1,000 vehicle occupants died, and 417 of them weren’t wearing seat belts.
“You wouldn’t believe how many accidents we go to where people are ejected, thrown from the car. And they may live, but they’re not going to be the same. And this goes along with this public safety [class]. It’s because they weren’t wearing their seat belt,” Sanders said.
The Graham High School Public Safety Academy offers firefighting, public safety and emergency medical services courses to students from all six ABSS high schools.
Instructor Joel Davis said he organized the Duke Life Flight visit — which was rescheduled twice because of helicopter maintenance needs and a call from Granville County — to expose these students to a new career path.
“This is just another opportunity to show them there’s more to this career than just fire, EMS and law enforcement,” he said.
“Some of them come into class and they really don’t know what they want to do, but you start exposing them to these different career paths and things start to click in their mind for them … to start thinking about careers after high school.”
Sanders fell in love with the field after attending a PR event in Garner when he was 10-years-old. He’s been a flight nurse for over a decade and worked on the ground for seven years prior to that.
“When I come to work, it’s not like going to work,” Sanders said. “You get to spend time with your friends, you get to fly in a helicopter, you get to take care of sick people, help people, and you get paid to do it. It’s a decent living. I don’t feel like it’s a job where I hate being there or it’s something I’ve got to do to make money.”
[divider style=”10″]
Interested in learning more about how to get started as a Flight Medic, Flight Nurse or EMS Pilot? Join our Future Flight Crew Private Facebook Group. Answer 3 simple questions to join, takes less than a minute.
CLICK THE BANNER:
[arrows style=”arrow-red-11.png” align=”left”]
