SYRACUSE — Upstate University Hospital and the U.S. Army’s Fort Drum near Watertown on June 26 conducted a medical-transport training exercise on the roof of the Syracuse medical facility. The event included a Black Hawk helicopter from Fort Drum landing on the structure’s helipad. The exercise sought to ensure that both Upstate and Fort Drum […]
SYRACUSE — Upstate University Hospital and the U.S. Army’s Fort Drum near Watertown on June 26 conducted a medical-transport training exercise on the roof of the Syracuse medical facility.
The event included a Black Hawk helicopter from Fort Drum landing on the structure’s helipad.
The exercise sought to ensure that both Upstate and Fort Drum are “familiar and very comfortable working together” in the event they have to save someone’s life, Captain William Keller, executive officer for the medevac unit at Fort Drum, said while speaking with reporters on Upstate’s helipad.
“Fort Drum is beginning a range medevac mission in that we’re going to be covering soldiers out on the range that are out doing training. We do train very hard and it’s vital that the medevac that is responsible for evacuating our soldiers is not only prepared to pick them up, but [also] to come here to Upstate as well and drop them off,” Keller said.
The training involved getting the pilot familiarized with flying from the range environment at Fort Drum to Upstate and then moving the patient from the helicopter and the facility’s roof into the hands of the medical professionals at Upstate, Keller said.
Besides Upstate, Fort Drum is also beginning similar relationships with Samaritan Medical Center in Watertown and a medical facility serving Burlington, Vt., he added.
It’s part of an ongoing collaborative effort with Fort Drum to do outreach, training and education with them for the combat personnel there, Steve Adkisson, Upstate University Hospital’s pediatric and adult trauma program manager, said in his remarks to reporters on the helipad.
“The training … is just how to safely approach the helicopter when it’s running and when it’s moving, so when someone comes in, no matter what their injuries are, how to get them off the helicopter safely as possible and as quickly as possible, while maintaining safety for both the crew and the patient,” said Adkisson.
Upstate University Hospital has been working with Fort Drum in a training and outreach capacity for almost six years now, he adds, not only with the helicopters, but also with advanced trauma life-support training for combat medics and combat physicians.
The training exercise “streamlines” the actual process when the helicopter lands and turns over a patient, Kristen Halsey, staff sergeant at Fort Drum, said while speaking to reporters.
Halsey serves as a flight medic on the helicopter.
“We practice with them, then when we do land and they come up to the helicopter, they do it in a safe manner and they’re able to have a good handoff with the patient,” said Halsey.
Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com
