The COEfficient The COEfficient - Capital Health

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IN THE COMMUNITY Stollery’s PICU celebrates 10 Years The sky’s the limit for this Elite Transport Team RN Joanna Byers sits beside the transport sled in the plane with flight paramedic David Hole behind the monitor. ozens of pairs of winter boots are lined up and ready to be laced for a mad dash, even in the heat of Alberta’s dry summer. They belong to an elite group of specially trained physicians, nurses and respiratory therapists who make up the Stollery Children’s Hospital’s Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) transport team. This team provides specialized care of severely ill children during hospitalto-hospital transfers and transports by ambulance, helicopter and airplane. The team can be mobilized for a trip as far as the Arctic in just 20 minutes. This month, the PICU transport team celebrates its 10th anniversary. “In 1996, the first formally trained PICU transport team in Alberta was launched,” says the group’s Medical Director Dr. Allan de Caen. “We found that there were children in hospitals within Edmonton and surrounding rural communities who were critically ill and needed not only definitive care from Pediatrics within Edmonton, but needed to be transported to us without deteriorating en route. For this reason, a specialized PICU transport team was developed.” A decade later, the team is now considered one of the busiest in Canada and serves the largest geographic area, stretching from parts of eastern B.C. and the Yukon, across the central Arctic, and extending down into eastern Saskatchewan and southern Alberta as necessary. The team can bring the resources of the Stollery Children’s Hospital’s Pediatric Intensive Care Unit to the patient’s bedside. “We’ve learned to improvise in some very unusual situations,” says the team’s Unit Manager, Vanessa French. “We’ve coped with IV lines freezing in the Arctic, monitors that stop working in bitter cold conditions, and been COURTESY PICU TRANSPORT TEAM (PLANE) 14 CHQ ~ SUMMER 2006 www.capitalhealth.ca
Stollery Children’s Hospital’s Pediatric Intensive Care Unit transport team: Back row, left to right: Eileen Heidler (RT), Shevaun Clark (RT), Darrell Derkach (RT), Shannon Duncan (RN), Kelly Stabler (RT), Colleen Gresiuk (RN), Dr. Jon Duff, Lindsay Lonsdale (RT), Christine Bichai (RT), Dr. Allan de Caen, Dave Schoepp (RT), Karen Tomlinson (RN), Esther Weathers (RT), Vanessa French (unit Manager). Front row, left to right: Joy Mekechuk (RN), Misty Reis (RN), Debra Anderson (RN), Tonia Polak (RN) Klara Vigen (RN), Cindi Ryan (RT). PAT MARSTON/CAPITAL HEALTH (GROUP) faced with a dispatch to pick up one critically ill child and on arrival learning we needed to transport three.” In the past 10 years, 2,500 sick children from the Capital Health region and beyond have been helped by this group. One of the most memorable and challenging transports occurred last summer when the team was asked to transport a cardiac patient from Winnipeg to the Stollery Children’s Hospital. Respiratory therapist, Kelly Stabbler, was part of the mission along with the Stollery Children’s Hospital’s Extracorporeal Life Support Team. “There was so much equipment involved that we had to use a military Hercules aircraft for the transport. It took an amazing amount of co-ordination The team can be mobilized for a trip as far as the Arctic in just 20 minutes. with the medical team in Winnipeg, the emergency medical services personnel, even Winnipeg’s fire department.” The sky remains the limit for this team as it welcomes another decade of providing critical care for children. “We want to see an increase in our role in outreach education,” according to Dr. de Caen. “It takes time to reach most of our referral centres, and whatever we can do to better prepare the health care team in those centres to care for critically ill children before we arrive will ultimately make a difference in the outcome of children.” www.capitalhealth.ca SUMMER 2006 ~ CHQ 15
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The COEfficient The COEfficient - Capital Health

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