{"id":197514,"date":"2024-06-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-12T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=197514"},"modified":"2024-06-13T19:15:25","modified_gmt":"2024-06-13T19:15:25","slug":"wisconsin-guard-black-hawk-unit-conducts-mass-casualty-exercise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=197514","title":{"rendered":"Wisconsin Guard Black Hawk Unit Conducts Mass Casualty Exercise"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n Medical staff from Aurora Medical Center-Summit\u2019s emergency and trauma center wait for a Wisconsin Army National Guard Black Hawk helicopter to arrive so they can move notional patients to the emergency room during a mass casualty exercise May 31, 2024. The scenario called for a single Black Hawk crew to medically evacuate three victims critically injured by a building collapse. (Wisconsin Department of Military Affairs photo by Vaughn R. Larson)
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SUMMIT, Wis. – The Wisconsin Army National Guard UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, carrying a medevac crew and notional patients from its base in West Bend, circled the helipad site before landing at Aurora Medical Center-Summit, completing a simulated medical transport in less than an hour.<\/p>\n

The flight, part of a mass casualty exercise with emergency and trauma center medical staff from Aurora Medical Centers in Summit and Green Bay, represents a journey that began many months ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first step for us \u2014 crawl stage \u2014 to be able to understand and figure out all the details how to transfer patients safely,\u201d said Sgt. 1st Class Eric Furbee, a standardization instructor for the flight paramedics with the 1st Battalion, 147th Aviation Regiment crews in West Bend.<\/p>\n

Part of the day\u2019s training included Aurora medical staff figuring out how to receive three patients simultaneously from the helipad.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe procedure\u2019s a bit different,\u201d said Dr. Christopher George, an emergency physician at Aurora-Summit. \u201cIt\u2019s good practice for both of us on how we receive patients as well as how they bring in patients. In this case, we went out to get the patients \u2014 typically, they would land and would be coming to us. Multiple patients come in on one Black Hawk, as opposed to Flight For Life, which brings one patient at a time. So it\u2019s a slightly different dynamic.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a military setting, litter bearers are waiting for the Black Hawk arrival to transfer patients from the helicopter to the field hospital. With a civilian air ambulance, the flight crew brings the patient into the emergency room.<\/p>\n

The training scenario was a building collapse north of the medical center. Aurora-Summit is a Level 2 trauma center, which can handle most medical injuries. Injuries suffered by the notional patients brought to Aurora-Summit by Black Hawk included a broken neck, hand amputation and burns. One patient, a medical mannequin, would later be transported to Aurora BayCare in Green Bay to simulate a medical transfer between facilities.<\/p>\n

Sgt. Stephanie Ziety, a crew chief with the West Bend unit, played the role of a patient with an unstable C-spine fracture \u2014 a broken neck.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey did a trauma assessment,\u201d Ziety said when she was brought into the emergency and trauma center, \u201cto make sure there wasn\u2019t any additional trauma, make sure my vitals were good. They simulated getting images and results from that, so the next step would have been being seen by a neurosurgeon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ziety has been with the Wisconsin National Guard since 2011 and part of a medevac crew since 2018.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s another opportunity for me to see what goes on with patients in the back of an aircraft,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Maj. Sarah Latza, operations officer with the Army Aviation Support Facility #1 in West Bend, said this training was the brainchild of Furbee and Maj. John Jenkins, an aeromedical assistant with the Wisconsin Army National Guard.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve gotten with the Aurora medical community here in Wisconsin, and this exercise actually has grown into what it is today,\u201d Latza said.<\/p>\n

George said there have been multiple drills and teaching opportunities with the National Guard.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe more times you interact with the same people, it gets more comfortable and easy,\u201d he said, \u201cand then the small details are much easier to do and you can focus on the big things because everybody\u2019s comfortable with how the procedure works.\u201d<\/p>\n

Furbee acknowledged that it is not routine for an Army National Guard Black Hawk to transport patients to a civilian hospital, but that underscores the need to train for the possibility.<\/p>\n

\u201cThroughout the year we get called for several search and rescue missions \u2014 primarily lost hikers, lost children, things of that nature,\u201d Furbee said. \u201cSo this is good practice for us to be able to figure out the processes and procedures and techniques to accomplish that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Medical staff from Aurora Medical Center-Summit\u2019s emergency and trauma center wait for a Wisconsin Army National Guard Black Hawk helicopter to arrive so they can move notional patients to the emergency room during a mass casualty exercise May 31, 2024. The scenario called for a single Black Hawk crew to medically evacuate three victims critically […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197516,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=197514"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197517,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197514\/revisions\/197517"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/197516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=197514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=197514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=197514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}