Jan./Feb. | 2010
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Profile:
Angels with Wings
U-M Survival Flight makes a lasting impression

During a University of Michigan Survival Flight visit to the Upper Peninsula, a newspaper reporter spoke to Denise Gottschalk, who credited the Survival Flight team with saving her daughter’s life back in 2001.

“If it weren’t for those wonderful, awesome angels with wings, she wouldn’t be here today,” Gottschalk said in an article in the Mining Gazette.

Survival Flight flew to the Houghton County Memorial Airport in the UP last November to introduce its newest jet aircraft. The maize and blue jet was fresh off its debut rescue flight – an Oct. 25 mission to transport a child in need of the definitive cardiac care available at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital.

Survival Flight Team

  • 20 full-time registered nurses
  • 9 communication specialists
  • 10 helicopter and 8 fixed-wing pilots (Pentastar Aviation)
  • 8 full-time mechanics (Pentastar Aviation)

Though the aircraft was new, the flight was just the latest in a long line of lifesaving journeys. Survival Flight is the critical care transport service of the University of Michigan Health System. “We have completed more than 30,000 transports – by helicopter and airplane – of both patients and organs over the past 26 years,” says Peter Forster, administrator for the Department of Emergency Medicine.

The Survival Flight fleet – three helicopters and a fixed-wing jet plane – flies over 160,000 miles each year and has flown over 4 million miles since it began in 1983. It provides services to the 48 continental states, Canada and Mexico. The medical staff aboard are UMHS employees, but the aircraft and pilot services are leased. Last summer, Pentastar Aviation – based in Waterford – became the Health System’s sole provider of aviation services and operational control.

There is no question that Survival Flight is known for best practices in critical care transport. This past October, a two-man Survival Flight team won the prestigious METI Cup, a national competition between air medical teams that is held during the annual Air Medical Transport Conference. The winning team consisted of two flight nurse specialists, Ted Adelmann, R.N., EMT-P, and Paul Munger, R.N., EMT-P, who effectively displayed their real time and real situation response skills on state-of-the-art patient simulators.

Survival Flight Fleet

  • 3 Bell 430 helicopters that fly at an average speed of 150 miles per hour
  • A fixed-wing aircraft, a Cessna Citation Encore CE-560 that can cruise at 470 miles an hour

“The fact that Ted and Paul were able to win while competing for the first time on a national stage makes their achievement even more remarkable,” says Mark J. Lowell, M.D., medical director of Survival Flight and associate professor of emergency medicine. “They were clearly an underdog team that handily defeated 15 other teams in three different and challenging patient scenarios.”

This was the third year in a row that a U-M Survival Flight team won this national competition.

Typically, a crew on a Survival Flight mission includes two pilots, two emergency medical transport specialists and a full complement of advanced life support equipment – all supported by a communications team on the ground  that guides the mission. The medical staff is extremely qualified and well-trained; they are committed to excellence in everything they do – from saving lives to teaching others how to save lives. This is a necessity while performing medical care to patients in flight in a cabin space the size of a small car.

Kris Nelson, R.N., CEN, EMP-P, CMTE, has been a member of Survival Flight for 22 years and recently received a letter from a patient he transported in 1991.

“She was involved in a horrific accident that year and sustained terrible injuries,” Nelson says. “She sent a picture and wrote to me that she has been married since 2002 and is the mother of two beautiful children. She wanted me to know I was her hero. Eighteen years later and I’m still embarrassed at the thought of ‘hero’ and my name in the same sentence. Mostly I’m just proud to have contributed to her recovery, to have made a difference.”

Acronyms

CEN: Certified Emergency Nurse
CMTE: Certified Medical Transport Executive
EMT-P: Emergency Medical Technician – Paramedic



More information about Survival Flight.

Written by Bruce Spiher

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