Airborne lifesavers love their jobs
Flight nurses perform 20 to 30 medical evacuations a month
Stewart Burnett
Northern News Services
Monday, May 9, 2016
NUNAVUT
When a medical evacuation (medevac) is required, it's good to know the people performing the operation love their job.
Flight nurses Dara Sutherland and Maryse Gravelle are the people saving lives on emergency plane trips south. The two work for Keewatin Air medevac operations. - Stewart Burnett/NNSL photo |
"It's fantastic," said Maryse Gravelle, a flight nurse who started with Keewatin Air in December with almost 16 years of emergency care experience.
This is the first job she's had that she doesn't look at the clock to see when her shift is over.
"Some days you're working 24 or 36 ridiculous hours, and even on those long days I haven't come across a point where I wanted to pack it in and say, 'No, I'm done.' It's always great, it's a good challenge, it's like nothing I've ever experienced before and so far I love it."
She and colleague Dara Sutherland, who's been a flight nurse with Keewatin for three years, are on a two weeks on, two weeks off schedule.
In those two weeks on, they're constantly on call and perform an average of 10 to 15 medevac operations in Nunavut.
"If they're not well enough to fly on a scheduled flight or it's some kind of trauma or critical case, then we will go and get them," said Sutherland.
A local health centre will communicate with Qikiqtani General Hospital to initiate a medevac, at which point a dispatcher is called and, usually, a plane is in the sky within an hour. Most flights involve one nurse and two pilots, plus one patient and an escort, but more serious cases sometimes mean another nurse is required.
Situations involving babies with respiratory problems and older people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are common, as well as trauma cases involving snowmobile or boating accidents.
"It varies," said Sutherland. "You never ever know what the call's going to be when that phone rings."
Sutherland was involved in a medevac following a devastating tent fire in Pond Inlet last summer, which eventually took the lives of four people.
She recalls getting the call mid-morning with little information to go on.
"We basically loaded up our plane with all the equipment we could shove in there and just went, and really arrived with no clue as to what we were going to walk into," said Sutherland.
She encountered four critical patients, and four planes followed hers to get everyone out.
"The teamwork, the amount of resources, the amount of co-ordination to do that call and to get everyone out of there as quickly as possible was amazing."
Sutherland said it's challenging and sometimes terrifying to see people in critical states. She had been awake well over 27 hours by the time her role in the medevac was over.
There's a fair amount of "MacGyver-ing" things, she added, with nurses coming up with solutions and ideas in tight spaces with limited equipment.
Gravelle, although still new on the job, remembers a helicopter medevac involving a patient who had an incident out on the land as her most exciting moment so far.
"That was my first time ever being in a helicopter, let alone doing a medevac in a helicopter," said Gravelle. "It was a really neat experience."
One of the keys to doing the job successfully is having a team player attitude, they both said.
"You have a lot more responsibility, you have a lot more balls to keep in the air and things to keep moving so it goes smoothly and your patient is well taken care of and safe," said Sutherland, comparing the role to her previous non-airborne nursing jobs.
"The logistics of just one single medevac are huge, so on top of your nursing care you have all of those things to consider - the timeline of your pilots, the timeline of your flights, what the weather looks like where you're going to, where you're leaving from, sometimes you have to be cognizant of how long the health centre nurses have been up with their patient."
Sometimes they show up to a community and the situation is totally different than they thought.
"Being a little bit psychic doesn't hurt either, to know what's going on in your partner's mind if you are flying with another nurse," Gravelle said.
She's loving the opportunity so far.
"Being able to see part of the country that most people could only dream of seeing is amazing," said Gravelle. "There's not one second that goes by that I don't look out the plane window and think, 'Wow, I'm so lucky right now.' You challenge yourself every single moment."
