Duke Life Flight reaccredited for safety and quality in medical transport

It's a familiar sound: The low rumble of an approaching helicopter, the dull thump of rotorblades as a chopper soars overhead.

This sound can be music to the ears of victims at the scene of a critical motor vehicle crash or other traumatic accident. In some cases, a trip in an air ambulance can mean the difference between life and death.

"If you look at the scope that we go into the rural communities out into Clinton and Lumberton and Wilson, those patients get rapid access to tertiary care. To lift from Lumberton, and fly back is about 42 to 45 minutes by air. For them to come by ground you're looking at about an hour and 35 to an hour and 45 minutes, so you've really cut that patients time in halfout-of-hospital time."

Duke has two helicopters and three ground transport units, and 24/7 satellite sites in Burlington to the west of the Triangle, and Smithfield to the southeast. As the program has grown, so has its commitment to excellence: This summer, Life Flight was re-accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Medical Transport Systems, or CAMTS. To get re-accredited, Life Flight voluntarily submitted to peer review by other professionals in air and ground medical transport, the key focus being safety and quality of patient care during transport.

"It is the only accreditation for air medical transport, but its one that the bar is set pretty high on. You have to maintain a lot of continuing education, a lot of safety things and patient-focused elements, and its not easy to get. So for us to be reaccredited on both air and ground again is a great accomplishment."

"We had a couple of things that we are excelling at.
Dr. Georgiade, our medical officer, comes by every day to check on the staff that was one of our excellent things. We also have a risk assessment that we just implemented, where the ground driver, if there are tornadoes out there, the driver can say Were fitting into a category yellow, or a category red and lets talk about this 'Can we get there safely and get back?' So they gave us kudos for the risk assessment for the ground."

Of course, for Life Flights air operations, weather is the single biggest determinant of go flight or no flight. Aircraft do not fly unless area weather is better than stringent minimum requirements. Life Flights ground units act as a critical backup for the aircraft when the weather forecast, and ultimately the pilot, say its unsafe to fly.

Annually, Duke Life Flight receives more than 1,500 requests for air transport, and more than 2,500 for ground. And although Life Flight may be most closely associated with major accident scenes, emergency transport is only part of the mission.

"The majority of the transports we do are patients coming into the critical care units, or emergency department. The majority of them are coming from another hospital, and were bringing them here to Duke to access services that some of the smaller facilities dont have or cant provide."

The ability to admit critical patients sometimes bumps up against capacity at a hospital as busy as Duke, but thankfully a major hospital addition- known as Duke Medicine Pavilion- just announced by leaders of the Duke University Health System, will soon add critical care beds, and expand overall patient capacity.

"You have facilities that are trying to get patients into Duke, and we struggle with bed capacity. With the addition, it will be great because we can bring our patients to Duke, bring patients back to our own facility, and its just a great, great announcement."

Life Flight will soon celebrate another great accomplishment March 5, 2010 will mark 25 years in the air for Duke Life Flight.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• Duke
• University
• Life
• Flight
• helicopter
• chopper
• trauma
• medical
• air
• ground
• transport
• CAMTS
• accreditation
• Georgiade

[everydayandrew88]

@5959512 For most air medical programs in the USA you have to be a pilot with several thousands hours of flight experience, Alot of places require you to have so many hours flying at night or my night vision, or certain hours flight IFR and VRF ect.... most pilots are ec military.

[5959512]

what do you have to do to become a life flight pilot?

[train2n0where]

@txcavu "...They can also punctuate and use good English grammar." Great comment! That's what I like (plus the color scheme / finish of their chopper).

;)

[txcavu]

I have known since Duke's flight program since the 80's and they are one of the finest in the air. They can also punctuate and use good English grammar.

[TheBellhelicopterman]

i hope they better than airevac lifeteam