By Jamie Schuman
Chapel Hill Herald (Durham, NC)
Copyright 2006 The Durham Herald Co.
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Lydia Perez, who lives near UNC, often sees Carolina’s medical helicopters from afar as they land at UNC Hospitals.
On Monday, though, she got to peek inside the choppers, which pack in the types of tools, such as ventilators and heart monitors, that doctors would find in a large emergency room. The university’s medical helicopter program, known as UNC Air Care, recently had its twentieth anniversary. To celebrate, officials invited visitors to learn about the program.
Families and some UNC Hospitals employees poked around the choppers and talked to members of the UNC Air Care team on the roof of the eight-story North Carolina Neurosciences Hospital, where the helicopters land.
Perez and relatives from Cleveland brought three kids to get a close-up look at the helicopters. “It’s a little closer view, and they like to see how things work,” Perez said.
UNC Air Care, which started on July 17, 1986, serves the entire state, as well as southern areas in Virginia and some northern parts of South Carolina. The service’s two choppers take patients from accident scenes to trauma centers or from hospital to hospital.
When they’re on an emergency run, the helicopters land on narrow highways, in farmers’ fields, in parking lots and on athletic fields -- wherever they can find enough room to get close to the scene of the emergency. Ground crews help load the patient, and the helicopter takes off and rushes back to the hospital.
Last year, the service made 1,318 helicopter flights, as well as 1,228 ambulance ground transports.
Before UNC Air Care started, the hospital used ground transportation or called in Army aircraft, said Chris Williams, a registered nurse with the program’s pediatric team. But UNC’s helicopters are equipped to give patients a better level of care than the Army’s, he said.
Air Care is the only medical air program in the state with separate services for adults and children. On adult flights, a pilot, a registered nurse and a paramedic go with the patient. On pediatric flights, a pilot, a registered nurse and a respiratory therapist travel.
Air Care’s choppers, one of which is based in Chapel Hill and the other in Fayetteville, are always on call. The helicopters each have a giant Tar Heel painted on their undersides, and their rooftop landing pad has that logo on it, too.
From the pilot’s seat, Nathan Hensley, who was at the event with Perez’s and his families, said he liked looking at all of the buttons and gadgets in the front of the plane.
“You can sit and look at everything,” said the 7-year-old.
His father, Brian, said he had never been in a medical helicopter before. “It’s an ambulance without wheels,” he said.
One of those wheelless ambulances couldn’t stay for the whole party, however, as it had to leave early to make a pick-up.
The helicopter, which can travel up to 155 mph, was going to take a patient from Dunn to Pinehurst. The trip, which would take more than an hour by car, takes 20 minutes in the air.
Visitors watched as the helicopter hovered a few feet in the air, slowly turned and flew off.