Critical Care Transports

[Future Doc B]

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Greetings SDN members! It's been a long time since I've posted here...

Anyways, as I've gotten further in my EM residency, I've become more interested in Critical Care Transports. For the people who aren't aware, critical care transports are usually inter-facility transfers of ICU patients either by ground (Mobile ICUs) or air (Helo or fixed-wing). A couple of the residencies I interviewed at offered this experience as a regular part of their EM curriculum. My program (so far) has no formal experiences set out but you have the ability to schedule it as part of your EMS block.

My questions for all of you are:

1) How does a EM-trained physician get involved in Critical Care Transports other than doing a fellowship in EMS/Transport Medicine (or being part of the military)?

2) What sort of extra training would I need (besides a fellowship) to do transport medicine?

3) What additional resources on transport medicine would you recommend?

Thanks,

B

 

[BF2BC EMT]

Greetings SDN members! It's been a long time since I've posted here...

Anyways, as I've gotten further in my EM residency, I've become more interested in Critical Care Transports. For the people who aren't aware, critical care transports are usually inter-facility transfers of ICU patients either by ground (Mobile ICUs) or air (Helo or fixed-wing). A couple of the residencies I interviewed at offered this experience as a regular part of their EM curriculum. My program (so far) has no formal experiences set out but you have the ability to schedule it as part of your EMS block.

My questions for all of you are:

1) How does a EM-trained physician get involved in Critical Care Transports other than doing a fellowship in EMS/Transport Medicine (or being part of the military)?

2) What sort of extra training would I need (besides a fellowship) to do transport medicine?

3) What additional resources on transport medicine would you recommend?

Thanks,

B

Sounds interesting, (sorry I can't help) I have limited interaction with CCT. I have never seen an MD on a rig though, only CCEMT-P, CCRN and RT. For anything in the air you'll probably have to know altitudes and its interaction with medication. Good luck, and I'm interested to see some responses as I'm well out of my league.

 

[Doctor Bob]

1) How does a EM-trained physician get involved in Critical Care Transports other than doing a fellowship in EMS/Transport Medicine (or being part of the military)?

2) What sort of extra training would I need (besides a fellowship) to do transport medicine?

3) What additional resources on transport medicine would you recommend?

The program I'm at has a very robust helicopter module... we do a few weeks every year, a couple of shifts a month here and there and starting 2nd year we can moonlight on the helicopter. It's also the busiest helicopter service in the state of Illinois so it's a lot of good exposure.

But anyways.

The medical director of the helicopter isn't EMS/Transport Medicine fellowship trained... she just volunteered for it. There are little programs popping up all the time and they need medical directors.

Check out the Air Medical Physician Association (http://www.ampa.org). I think they'd probably be the best place for you to start, and they have a lot of good resources for you.

If your interest is still piqued, there's still time to sign up for the 2010 Air Medical Transport conference in Ft. Lauderdale Florida (http://www.aams.org). There are a lot of these meetings and they are a good way to find out about new companies and new openings in the industry.

Like you, I'm very much into the critical care transport also, but when I'm done with my civilian residency I'm going back to the Air Force so it's a bit easier for me (the Air Force has Critical Care Air Transport Teams and are always looking for interested people).

 

[Venko]

If you are asking in what circumstances to MD's fly...there are exceedingly few places that allow attendings to participate in medical transport because of the risk vs benefit ratio. Many residencies involve residents to transport patients. Mayo where I trained has a robust involvement of residents in rotorwing transport of their patients. Illinois as was mentioned also has a robust moonlighting system for residents to transport patients (sometimes internationally). GWU where I am doing my fellowship has attending level transports of VIP patients and other special situation transports as a moonlighting opportunity for physicians. Lastly, EMS fellowships are about creating, optimizing, and maintaining first responder / transport systems and are not going to put you in the back of a helicopter very often...

This arena is also very fertile for research, so please check with your EMS director to see what you can do to get involved if you are interested.