HAGERSTOWN – Dr. R. Adams Cowley, a pioneer of emergency medicine as a military surgeon and founder of the University of Maryland’s Shock Trauma Unit, promoted the idea of a “golden hour” for saving victims of life-threatening injuries. If treatment can begin within that time, the odds of survival exponentially increase.
Professional flight clinicians like Rob Snider and Reuben Layton bear this universal truth in mind every time they take off from the Hagerstown Regional Airport as part of LifeNet 8-1, the emergency air medical provider serving Maryland, South Central Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
A subsidiary of Air Methods, LifeNet 8-1 responds to about 60 calls a month, or 500 calls a year, in support of first responders and hospitals, providing round-the-clock services for medical and trauma events including heart attacks, strokes, burns and other critical situations in time to prevent shock and brain damage.
About six of 10 responses are between medical facilities, and four at scenes of road accidents, fires or other disasters within range of the service, which can fly about 90 minutes nonstop.
“We are the tip of the spear, the pinnacle of emergency medicine,” said Snider, 49, who lives in Martinsburg with his family when not tucked away in a snug barracks and control center at the edge of the airport complex. “It’s a complete team effort.”
LifeNet 8-1 is just one partner in an emergency ecosystem team that includes first-responders from local police and fire companies, and emergency departments at healthcare facilities across the region, but their ability to land in corn fields, parking lots, and on country roads, provides a critical advantage to get patients to a fully-equipped hospital within that golden hour.
“These state-of-the-art helicopters are essentially mobile intensive care units,” said LifeNet 8-1 Account Executive Ron Brown, a former LifeNet flight paramedic himself. “Our goal is to get the patient airborne within 10 minutes of arriving at the scene of an accident.”
Despite the cramped quarters, LifeNet copters are equipped with advanced cardiac, blood flow monitors, ventilators, intravenous pumps, whole blood and a full array of critical care medications. Despite all these life-saving tools, Brown pointed out, the flight crew’s extensive experience and training are what really make the difference to a patient’s survival.
Late last month, the service commemorated 15 years of service at the Hagerstown base at a ceremony attended by local officials including Washington County Commission President John F. Barr and Commissioner Randall E. Wagner, who presented a plaque recognizing LifeNet 8-1 as a critical asset to the community.
Also at the ceremony was the family of Joel Brindle, who was struck by a passing vehicle while checking his mailbox in Greenville and thrown more than 100 feet, suffering massive blood loss and severe chest trauma.
Responding in minutes, the LifeNet team provided Brindle critical prehospital care while transporting Brindle to Meritus Medical Center in Hagerstown, where a trauma surgeon was waiting to conduct lifesaving surgery.
“We are grateful every day for the LifeNet team,” Brindle’s wife, Alicia, said at the ceremony. “We are certain their quick decisions and fast actions made the difference in saving Joel’s life. Against all odds, today he is fully recovered and thriving.”
Brown was among the responders that day, as well as Flight Nurse Reuben Layton, who is Snider’s partner these days. Both Brown and Layton have worked at the Hagerstown base since its inception. The air medical flight crew consists of a pilot, paramedic, and nurse. There are four complete Hagerstown-based units, one of which is on call 24 hours a day.
“We help people on their worst day, and work to give them a tomorrow,” Layton, 47, who lives with his wife and family in Buck Valley, PA when not on duty. “I think what we do is the noblest endeavor one can achieve. Your life is our mission.”
Also at the ceremony was young Sammy Schultz, who as a 2-month-old fell gravely ill in his Fulton County home. His parents Daren and Christina called an ambulance, and when first-responding paramedics arrived and saw his condition was critical, they called LifeNet. Finding the baby in “code blue” cardiac arrest, they took off in minutes, providing treatment on the way to the hospital.
“In the chaos and fear after Sammy coded, it was a huge comfort to travel with him in the helicopter to a hospital that was hours away had we traveled by car,” Christina said. Given that he was just a baby, one of the clinicians gave up his seat so his mother could stay with Sammy during the flight.
“We will always value this team as part of our family for caring for my son like they did.”
