An absolutely outrageous misuse of resources for a patient who did not need air evac. These flights aren’t cheap and the patient and family are billed. This isn’t one of those ignore and it will go away kind of medical bills either - it will be a charge from the city for $10,000+ and will absolutely go to collections.
There isn’t a trained air medic on board nor is there appropriate medical equipment to handle a patient who needs emergency life saving care and rapid delivery to a trauma 1 hospital. In other words, a patient who qualifies for emergency air evacuation.
Strapping a stable and visibly uninjured patient to a gurney and flying to the hospital isn’t helpful, it’s idiotic. We already have enough bullshit trauma 1 activations. There’s no need for more, much less ones delivered by bored traffic pilots.
What is a trauma 1 activation? I get what it's meant to sound like, but that's not a phrase I've heard in 12 years as a paramedic (but that will no doubt vary around the country). In this area it's Code 3 (i.e. critical) Trauma, and has nothing to do with the Trauma designator of the target hospital.
As for bullshit activations, in most places, this is done by a tool often signed off by the state under medical direction: https://doh.wa.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/Documents/Pubs...
One of the reasons to do this is to try to remove "emotional" considerations, and stick to objective criteria. Another similar thing is for Airlift pilots, where they are deliberately not given patient information when they are determining whether to fly. They are told pick up point and destination only. This is to avoid, "We really shouldn't have flown, but it was a toddler with significant burns, so we took a chance on it" type situations.
Thankfully, the police officers received a call for help and responded to it. It's not too hard to imagine what would happen if a person had internal trauma and an unskilled observer said "nah, you look fine." We quite literally could have riots over a cop letting a person die like that.
An untrained person unprofessionally assessing a patient in the field and then asking for an air evacuation should not happen. At bare minimum the first responder should be trained in performing a trauma survey and checking vital signs. However, there must be situations in which evacuations such as this example are performed inappropriately. Once an evacuation is requested it’s dutifully performed, inappropriate or not.
The example in the article is one such case. A non-medical helicopter without proper equipment for life threatening injuries was used. And as you said, if this person had internal injuries and destabilized during flight - what would they have done? Could they place an IV or do intraosseus access, give a fluid bolus, provide Epinephrine/vasopressors, or protect airway and intubate? Can they perform CPR?
This evacuation was purely a ride and not properly staffed or equipped for a patient with life threatening injuries or for a patient at risk of destabilizing. The pilot shouldn’t have taken the patient nor should the air evac been requested.
