The emergency drill: San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge is shut down. The Silver Strand is closed. And the hospital, Sharp Coronado, needs to transport a patient in critical care to a trauma center in San Diego: Sharp Memorial or Rady Children’s Hospital in Linda Vista.
This is what Sharp Coronado, in collaboration with the Coronado Fire Department and Premier Ambulance, practiced on April 17 with Mercy Air, a helicopter ambulance service operating throughout California and Nevada.
Rotors whipped the air as the chopper approached Tidelands Park, just across the street from the Coronado hospital. The large green field was perfect for landing, and the aircraft slowly lowered itself, unfurling wind as it got closer to the ground.
The blue and white helicopter landed and personnel filed out to meet first responders. Paramedics from the Fire Department rolled a manikin on a gurney toward the grounded aircraft, preparing to switch the dummy over to the Mercy Air flight paramedic and flight nurse.
The hospital had been preparing for this emergency drill for the past three months, according to Patricia Muth-Masayon, the regional emergency manager for Sharp.
Because of the bridge, the likelihood of it going down is something that might impact our patients or even our staff to be able to get here. If somebody was critically hurt and needed to go (to a trauma center), it only takes five minutes to fly from here to Sharp Memorial or Rady’s.
Patricia Muth-Masayon, regional emergency director for Sharp
“Because of the bridge, the likelihood of it going down is something that might impact our patients or even our staff to be able to get here,” Muth-Masayon said. “If somebody was critically hurt and needed to go (to a trauma center), it only takes five minutes to fly from here to Sharp Memorial or Rady’s.”
By contrast, a ground ambulance trip – using Highway 75 along the Silver Strand – would take about 45 minutes.
Chief Nursing Officer Marlena Montgomery said the Sharp hospital on the island does not have a cath lab, an examination room where doctors perform diagnostic and treatment procedures for cardiovascular conditions such as heart attacks.
If heart attack patients needed emergency surgery, she added, they would have to be moved to another hospital off the island. And if the bridge were down and other options exhausted, that’s where the emergency landing would come into play.
The last time the hospital needed a helicopter transfer was 2016, according to Montgomery, but it actually wasn’t due to issues with the bridge. There were challenges with the ability to transfer that patient in the right type of transportation, so they called Mercy Air.
She said that having different options for moving patients is always in their toolbox and if they can’t transfer someone the most common way, they need to just move down the list and see what works.
“Disaster drills are all about testing plan A, B, C, D, E,” Montgomery said. “(An air ambulance) would be like C or D.”
The closest Mercy Air helicopter base is in Oceanside, where the original aircraft was supposed to come from for the emergency drill. However, they got called in with an actual patient so an air ambulance from Fullerton came instead.
Council member Amy Steward, who attended the drill with fellow Council member Kelly Purvis, said that she thought that was the most interesting part of the drill.
The helicopter that came to Coronado was not the one they had intended from Oceanside. So, it demonstrated for us that they could take a helicopter from Fullerton and arrive here in 40 minutes and be ready to go.
Council member Amy Steward
“The helicopter that came to Coronado was not the one they had intended from Oceanside. So, it demonstrated for us that they could take a helicopter from Fullerton and arrive here in 40 minutes and be ready to go,” Steward noted.
Mercy Air crew typically is formed with three personnel aboard the aircraft. There is the pilot, a paramedic and a critical care nurse.
John Shoemaker, the flight nurse for this air ambulance, said that they work 24/7 365 days a year, in shifts of 24 hours each.
“We provide critical care services to the patients we transport. On board, we take blood products; we carry all the medications you might find in an intensive care unit in the hospital, including a ventilator,” Shoemaker explained. “We also partner with fire departments, who can request us to come on scene, land, pick up a patient and get him to the appropriate facility.”
Purvis said that it was great to have preparation, especially in a community that is so isolated.
“It was really nice to see Sharp being proactive in preparing for an emergency in the future,” she added.
