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Al Udeid Aeromedical team gets patients where they need to go

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Kia Atkins
  • 379th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
AL UDEID AIR BASE, Qatar --  When most people get sick or injured they are taken by car, ambulance or helicopter to the nearest medical facility. However, for servicemembers deployed to austere environments this option isn’t always available— they often require the help of Airmen assigned to the 379th Expeditionary Aeromedical Squadron here.

The mission of the 379th EAES is to aero evacuate wounded warriors to higher echelons of medical care, a mission where anything could happen and one that requires experts who are skilled at providing medical care in a non-standard environment like a military aircraft.

“For us to take a patient for aeromedical evacuation, they have to be pretty well stabilized before we can transport them,” said Senior Airman Adam Heil, 379th EAES flight medic, deployed from the 146th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron at Channel Island Air National Guard Station, Calif. “Anything could happen while they are in flight so it’s best if they’re stable, but we are trained for emergency care if needed.”

No matter the time of day, the aeromedical evacuation crews are ready to go as soon as they get the call.

“It could be 2 a.m. in the morning and you could’ve just went to sleep, but when you get the call you wake up and you have about ten minutes to get ready, pack a bag and be ready to go,” Heil said. “We get all the gear we need ready, pack it into a truck and get it loaded onto the aircraft.”

The aeromedical evacuation crews have three hours after notification to get on an aircraft and be ready to go. During that time, they have to prepare their equipment for the mission to be loaded onto an aircraft, conduct a preflight mission briefing and review their patients paperwork so they know what to expect upon arrival and how to give them the best medical care they can provide.

“When we are loading these patients onto aircraft, they all have varying degrees of injury or illness,” said Capt. Jessica Looft, 379th EAES flight nurse, deployed from Kadena Air Base, Japan. “We bring a lot of equipment with us onto the aircraft and we have to ensure we have everything we need because once you’re up in the air you can’t say ‘Oh I forgot a blanket’ or ‘I forgot this piece of equipment’. We have to have everything we need and we need to be ready to go. Our biggest job is just making sure that they’re safe and they’re comfortable on their flight that could be 10 to12 hours.”

Each aeromedical evacuation crew consists of five people-- two flight nurses and three medical technicians, but as needed, additional members can be added to each crew. On a typical mission, they could load anywhere from 10 to 15 patients whose issues could range from minor injuries to needing surgery to psychiatric issues. Whatever the issue, the aeromedical evacuation crews transport patients to the place best suited to handle their injury or illness.

“Every day is a new day,” Heil said. “It’s not ‘Groundhog’s Day’ for us when we’re flying. Every mission is completely different. There are always different patients with different illnesses or injuries.”

Their top priority, on all of their varied missions, is to take care of their patients and ensure that they are comfortable in transit.

“I feel like the service we provide gives people the confidence needed to accomplish their mission because they know that they’re going to be taken care of,” said Lt. Col. Debbie Golden, 379th EAES chief nurse, deployed from the 146th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron at Channel Island ANGS, Calif. “They can put trust in our system and that we’ll get them where they need to go. Even if it’s all the way home, we’ll take care of them.”

Getting patients from point A to point B via aircraft holds numerous challenges for the aeromedical evacuation crew due to the physiological changes that happen in the air. Also depending on their injury or illness they may not be able to fly above a certain altitude, which the aeromedical crew must communicate to the pilots flying the aircraft.

“There's a lot involved in moving patients in an aircraft,” Golden said. “Taking a patient from the ground up into the air can cause a lot og physiologic changes which can affect their condition. We are specially trained to care for patients at altitude during that transitional time.”

Golden went on to liken the experience to how long flights make healthy people uncomfortable, fatigued and overall feeling bad, but imagine being sick or injured on top of that.

Anywhere in the world where there are servicemembers in conflicts, aeromedical evacuation squadrons will be there to ensure they are taken to a place suitable to handle their illness and injuries.

“As long as there are military members deployed out there somewhere, there will be patients that need to be moved,” Golden said. “No matter where we are on this planet, no matter what the hostilities are or what the operation is called, there will always be patients that needs to be taken from point A to point B.”