Medical students at KU School of Medicine-Wichita train in lecture halls, laboratories, doctor's offices, free clinics, hospitals and more. Now students can take to the skies to learn about emergency medicine, thanks to ride-along flights with EagleMed critical care air medical transport company. 

The flights from EagleMed's Wichita base began in August and were instigated by the Wichita Emergency Medicine Interest Group, said Cheryl Dobson, a third-year medical student who is president and co-founder of the group. Several students, including Dobson, have ridden with crews so far, and 15 to 20 more are trying to work the 12-hour shifts into their schedules.  

Good preparation for rural practice  

Dobson plans to do her residency in family practice but work in emergency medicine. Any doctor-to-be can benefit from the flights - not just those interested in ER medicine - and especially those who plan to have a rural practice. "It is probable that at some point in their medical careers, each of our students will be on the sending or receiving end of air ambulance patient transport," she said.  

Tommy Robinson, a first-year medical student from Emporia, is making the rounds to learn about various specialties, to help decide which to pursue.  

"They have all sorts of interest groups, so I have been trying to go to as many as I can," Robinson said. "Cheryl Dobson brought up this opportunity. It sounded like a really great way to get a feel for emergency medicine. I jumped on it."  

Robinson did his shift in early October. "The patient wasn't in critical condition but needed an operation done that wasn't offered in Wichita," he said of the flight to Denver. "This patient was in pretty good shape, but the paramedics were watching all the time. They were always ready for anything."  

"It's a good way to get exposure to emergency medicine and stabilization of patients. It shows how a complete health care team works together - paramedics, patients, the pilots, nurses, doctors," Robinson said. "The crew was easy to get along with and ready to teach. It was nice to get away from the book stuff and do medicine."  

"These medical students are people we may see again three or four years after working with us. We like teaching them and learning from them," said Cindy Betts, operations manager for EagleMed in Wichita.

In-flight medicine  

EagleMed operates from several bases and states with a fleet of helicopters and Beechcraft King Air airplanes. Its Wichita base and maintenance facility are at Eisenhower National Airport. Students ride along as observers in the King Airs.  

The Emergency Medicine Interest Group approached EagleMed about the flights. EagleMed was receptive, but it took time to work out legalities. In the interim, the company offered students the chance to observe and take part in training. Working in an aircraft simulator, students watched and practiced intubations and other procedures.  

For the ride-alongs, EagleMed assigns the student a 12-hour shift. "We go through our aircraft and show them how things work," Betts said. "Our pilot gives them a safety briefing."  

EagleMed's missions range from lifesaving to mundane. "Sometimes it's an accident, sometimes it's an organ transplant, sometimes it's just that their condition needs to be managed somewhere else," Dobson said. Like many aspects of emergency medicine, a shift often involves sitting around waiting for a call to come. "They told me to bring some homework," Robinson said. And there's the chance that no call will come during the shift.  

On Dobson's shift, EagleMed flew a patient in respiratory stress to a tertiary care center. They landed in Oklahoma, where a local EMS crew took them to the local hospital. There, the EagleMed crew consulted with the local care team and prepared the patient for transfer by ambulance to the aircraft. The flight went smoothly, and the EagleMed crew and Dobson went with the patient for the handoff to the care team at the destination hospital.  

Earlier, Dobson had seen the pilot make the many calculations involved in each flight, factoring in distance, weather, fuel, crew flight hours and the weight of patient, parent, Dobson and crew. As they finished lunch in Oklahoma, dispatch called with another assignment. "The pilot crunched the numbers, and saw that he would time out on duty hours, so we weren't able to take that one."  

Confidence and collaboration-building  

Autumn Smith, a second-year medical student from Lewis, plans to practice in a rural community and the ride-along illustrated skills she will need. "It emphasized to me the necessity of making a quick decision. From the time of the call, it is going to be up to two hours to pick up the patient."  

"I got to see the collaboration between teams," Smith said. "I got to see people prepare the patient and the transport in the ambulance, in the air and then to the hospital. All the while you are working with a patient who is sometimes anxious. The continuity of care was amazing. The experience clarified what happens in between the sending and receiving hospitals."  

"Our school has a mission of training doctors for rural Kansas, and the air ambulance is an important part of that," Dobson said. "If we send a patient to a different facility, we need to know what that entails. Before the ride-along I had no idea how much the EagleMed crews were capable of. It's just the two of them.  They can't pull in help from down the hall."  

"I plan to work in rural ERs, and I know I will be sending patients to larger facilities for  care," she said. "Now I have a mental picture, not just something I read, of what that involves; and I have the confidence of knowing that my patients will be in good hands."