Flight Medic EDC

Hi guys, my name is Sam and welcome to Prepmatic. In this week's video we'll go over my day job as a critical care

flight

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medic

, so I recently accepted a job as a critical care

flight

para

medic

. We fly from stars that are very, very Patient care with small helicopters can be a logistical challenge in the back and you don't have much room to move around because of that, I have had to revamp what I carry with me as an EMS provider. than what I was wearing when I was in a 9-1-1 ground ambulance, so in this week's video we're going to go over everything I want, the protective gear in my uniform and the tools I carry with me to help make my job easier , starting with the uniform. fly in a relatively standard gibson and barnes flight suit.

The flight suit has more than enough pockets to store everything I carry, but the real purpose of this garment is to protect us in the event of an accident, if the helicopter falls and there is a fire, which are very unlikely events, then we have a layer of clothing that doesn't melt into our skin and gives us some semblance of protection without weighing us down as much as something like structural firefighting gear would for the boots I'm wearing. strengths salomón xa now these guys are gore-tex, so we do a lot of work in the mountains, a lot of rescues, searches and assistance in the mountains, and it is not unusual for us to walk a bit to reach a patient, especially in the months of snow.

It's really nice to have something waterproof. The good thing about these boots is that they are very easy to put on and take off. They have these straps here. I can put them on, tighten them and they are ready to go but they will still function as a hiking boot and be comfortable around the hanger during the day, we are required to wear helmets for our service and they give us fairly generic Gentex helmets but as we share my wife was the Kind enough to buy me a helmet for my birthday, this is the evo 252 and it just allows me to configure it how I want and then it has a couple of extra features.

I have a couple of issues with my neck, so it's nice to have a little bit of a lighter helmet that I'm not pulling on all shift, so what makes a helicopter helmet a helicopter helmet is basically its visor system and its communication system, so this helmet has an outer visor that can go down and this is just a reflective sun visor, but it also gives you some protection if a bird hits, something goes through the windshield, I don't hits directly in the face for night operations or if it's not as bright, this one also has an internal clear visor visor that can be lowered and is placed close enough to my face so that if we use night vision goggles on night operations, I can putting that monocle or binocular over my eyes and being able to see well while keeping eye protection on the inside of this has ear protection, so helicopters are relatively loud.

Going into this, you can see that there are two headphones here and they basically mute the sound, plus you have our communication system connected. So when we get on the helicopter, we connect and we can all talk to each other. We give the patient a headset so we can talk to the patient and then on the microphone arm, here's a light on the lips, so the light on the lips lights up. green because on an airplane, when we fly with night vision goggles, this is in the light spectrum at a point where it won't damage the night vision goggles, it doesn't provide much ambient light and it's kind of a bug. the pilot or the crew if we're keeping an eye out for obstacles and a person is caring for the patient, it's a nice feature to have instead of having a headlamp up here, which would eliminate the ability to have the goggles and the chin strap. here it is removable magnetic, overall I love this helmet obviously when we get on the scene one of the first things we do is take it off after we come off the rotor disc and then we'll just put it on to fly so this is not something where we're providing a lot of on-site patient care.

If we had to do it, it would be relatively difficult to hear the people around you, so now we have talked about the uniform and protective clothing I want. To go over some of the tools I use to do my job on a daily basis, one of the first things I did when I started wearing a flight suit was take everything I could out of my pockets. I did not like it. Things are there because there is no belt, it doesn't weigh on your waist, it just weighs on your shoulders and when you do 24 hour shifts you are in that flight suit for a long period of time which can be really exhausting. and I wanted a way to take away some of the tools for PR events or just quick maintenance flights or check flights and be able to have it close by, so I purchased the ifak hybrid from Crow Medical to meet a lot of those needs.

This is a truly Gucci piece. The kit is very expensive, but for me it was worth the money on the outside of this kit. I have a roll of medical tape that we use for all sorts of things, from changing drips to a different set of tubing to securing IVs to the patient to put on their leg and writing notes with tape is a must. I just have it secured in a grimlock. I have a cat tourniquet for self-help or you know, if we find ourselves in a scene. We're waiting for it, we just have it ready to go, just a very quick item that I don't want to have to dig through our larger bags to apply to a patient in the front.

Here I have a vertex organizer that I actually cut out. I get to work on the loop panel of this ifak. I use it if we're doing multi-dose syringes, so if we have a syringe full of fentanyl or if we're going to do an RSI in the future, I can prepare it. My medications and I can keep them in this while we wait to give them to him instead of putting them in my pocket or leaving them to get them. It is very easy to have them close to me and then I can have the medications ready to use. and when it comes time to give them really quick access in the front here I have an IV quick start kit again something that is relatively difficult to do in a helicopter I don't want to have to dig through our bags to find everything I need to start with an IV so here I just have the starter kit which has the tegaderm, the tourniquet, the disinfection and then on the back I have an 18 and 20 gauge needle and a J loop for quick starts and then entry. this I only have a 4x4 pad, you know, if God forbid I miss an IV, this is there, I can put it on and there's no harm, there's no foul, this is good too, if you have a little more complicated start , you can clean it before.

Applying a little adhesive to make it adhere a little better. Coming to the back of this backpack, it has a slightly more hidden zipper. I carry a highlighter here which is really great for just making quick notes that you can jot down on the turnstile. Time strip, whatever, it's nice to have and then I have a quick reference guide, so this guy here is not something you can buy, it's custom made by my service, it has a lot of our drip type titrations, a lot of our resuscitation endpoints and then just things that we don't do a lot of, but when we do it's really critical, like balloon pumps, boosters, fetal monitoring, things like that, so this is a really great little reference guide, we also have it on our phones, which I have a full protocol app for us, but sometimes it's easier to pull out a book and read it, especially with masks and the inability of phones to do facial recognition.

It's great to have and last but not least, in this pocket I have a sore rescue scorpion, it's pretty routine for us to pick up patients with three more drops up to you know, eight, twelve trips and when you have that, you have kind of Disaster, you have these bags everywhere they don't fit. your IV pole things like that so I like to have this this will allow you to hang three different drips or at least three and then you can take this red tab and put it over the IV pole or you can hang it on your epaulette if you're in the scene you have blood hanging something, it just keeps it very well organized.

It comes in the main pocket of this kit and this is actually the reason I bought it because of its ability to organize most of what is in the main pocket. for medication administration, little things that I can't look for in the bag that I have here that I can pick up and use, so in the upper right corner I have blunt tipped needles, these are for removing the vials safely, there are no needle there you can't stab yourself with it on a bumpy plane it's good to have I have a bottle of zofran one of those things if the patient is nauseous they get dizzy something like that I'd rather they didn't vomit potentially vomit The pilot is above us and he feels bad to them, so I want to keep them as comfortable as possible.

It is a very easy medication to administer and the substance is very safe. This is just a decoy lock. It's just an extra connector in case you accidentally remove one. an intravenous line. I have an 18 gauge needle for IM injections. It can also be used to extract medicines at the top. This is a three-way stop, so it's a valve that can basically connect three different things, so it's great for pushing and pulling. fluid administration for fluid boluses, especially in pediatric populations, it can also be used for adenosine administration and then if you don't have this guy here, it can be used to brew things or to reconstitute things like push dose pressers, now Up here, this is what's called a crow's foot and this just turns one IV site into three, so if you have three compatible medications, you can plug them all in here and you have multiple access points so you don't have to keep putting them in the intravenous. line in the multiple different ports it's all in one place it's easy to get acclimated to now this is one of my favorite devices and I think it surprises a lot of people, it's called the Tie Fighter or we call it the Tie Fighter and it's basically just a medication transfer, so we use push dose pressers quite regularly and we mix our epinephrine push dose pressers so that you take it from one to ten thousand prefilled syringes and put it in a 10 ml bottle. rinse with saline after you've removed a ml of that which gives you a concentration of one to a hundred thousand and then you can do little dabs of that while attaching them to an actual drip presser, like vasopressin or diaper drip or something like that. which now I have a crazy device down here, this is a mucosal atomizing device, this is for administration, so if you have someone who is in a lot of pain, especially pediatric patients, you don't really want to start them on an IV, you can do that . use this and you can actually administer like fentanyl, some different seizure medications, benzodiazepines, benzodiazepines, sorry, through your nare um and it absorbs relatively quickly, it's good to have and last but not least here I have an IV tourniquet if we're drawing blood. we do point of care labs, it's nice to have that because then you can pull out the existing IV sites, so when you move to this side of the package you'll see that I have two different hemostats.

I have a pipe clamp so once you have someone. A lot of what's called peep, is the pressure in the lungs, if you take the vent off without holding a tube, you're actually going to lose some of that alveolar recruitment, so this just helps you maintain that and also in the era We don't do it about covid. I don't want that to aerosolize a bunch of stuff around us, so it's good to hold a tube before moving it to a different ventilator and then I just have a simple hemostat here, which is great for holding a blood pressure cuff if you want to twist it. in a turnstile, it's good for holding cables together, putting cables on a sheet when we carry any number of things, it's also good for removing splinters, so I really like having these two things on this side of the kit, here I have a bunch of different syringes, so just quick medical administration stuff.

I think I have two 3ml syringes, one 5ml, and one 1ml, so it runs the gamut. Up here, this is a surgical cricothyrotomy kit from North American Rescue, so it has a spark plug introducer. It's a really simple device, and behind that I have a scalpel, so if we have to do an emergency surgical cricothyrotomy, I have it on me in this kit ready to go and then next to it I have an ars needle. I can start by decompressing one lung while my partner receives another if we suspect bilateral pneumonia, especially with the climb to an altitude that can cause the strain, according to authorities, to get much worse, very, very quickly, so I like to have thisEasily accessible at the top of the kit I have three saline flushes now the saline flushes have a variety of uses basically these are used to wash down medications we use them for our push dose pressers and then they can be used to confirm lines, it's rare that I answer a call without at least I use one of these, but I've gone through 10 in one call, so it's nice to have an extra pair with you, it's very easy to reach and manage.

I should note that I'm a millennial with this, so I use this. crossed, I didn't want to do a chest rig specifically because when we do something like intubation or it's something where we have to be relatively close to the patient, I want to be able to move this towards my back and get it off my back. This way, it doesn't affect me or It affects my mobility so it's really nice to have this so I can just throw it on my back and forget about it so it fits in my left shoulder pocket and left chest pocket.

I've got a couple of really simple things there. I have a s-beaner that I just clipped to my epuleto on the left side. This is great. It works similar to the pain rescue scorpion tool where I can hang a bunch of drops which I then hang on my epaulette or IV pole but then I also hang my N95 mask from this during the day so if we have that patient with infectious diseases, I can take it off, take off the surgical mask, put it on and that's it, I don't have to go back on the plane or borrow one from an emergency room because it's still kind of a Scarce Resource now in the left pen pockets on my shoulder.

I carry two pens. I have a standard gel pen and a very nice straight pen. I lose them all the time, but since I spent a little money on the right one. and wayne one, i managed to keep it and last but not least in the left breast pocket i have a notepad to write and reign in. Use it for every call you know, get a report from someone, just start writing and then, like, you have to document these things after the fact, so if we value a presser or start a different intervention, I can mark the time here very, very fast.

Some people have said that gel pens don't work on the right and rainy notepad. Notepads I haven't found work relatively well and have never had a problem getting down to the left cargo pocket. I also carry a Streamlight side flashlight. This is a pretty stylish flashlight. It has three different settings so you can turn on the green light like I was talking about before that helps you with using nvg. If I'm doing this in the cabin at night, you can't turn on the white light, so I can take this selector switch, set it to green, and I don't have to go through white. light to get to it, which is really nice, it also has a blue light that works very similarly and then it has a white light and an infrared light.

The really cool thing about this is that I can take it off the stand and off the band. here and I can put this on my tactical helmet for my SWAT operations, it's really good in that sense, so going into the right side cargo pocket I carry two main things similar to the EMS pants, the flight suit actually has a dedicated pocket for tromishers. So I bring my scissors x. I have used them for years. I like its simplicity. They fit really well in that pocket and aren't too heavy, so I've had really good luck with x years.

It's not sponsored by them or anything, although I have a relatively good relationship with the company and also carry my Whitman Master Cardiology. This is a stethoscope that has been with me since the beginning. It was a gift when I graduated paramedic school and I love it, stethoscopes are something that if you're in the medical field and you plan on being here for a while, I would invest in and keep it for years and years and years because a good stethoscope is not going to die. So to protect my eyes at the scene, I'm wearing Oakley safety glasses.

I honestly don't even know what specific model this is, but I bought them at Oakley, if you're an EMS military you can get Oakleys for about 50 off. They're not that expensive and then I just have this tail where I can hang it around my neck if I'm in flight. We have the other visor down. I don't need to leave it on all the time, but I still have it for intubations or once again for your potential infectious disease patient. Last but not least, everyone at my company carries a personal survival kit in the left ankle pocket of their flight suit.

Now survival kits are important in the hems because there have been several cases in the past where a helicopter went down in the mountains or in a remote location and the accident did not kill the crew, but environmental factors do many times, in In an accident the only thing you can guarantee you will have access to is to be on your person, that is why we carry these personal, but we complement them with kits in the side compartment of the helicopter that has sleeping bags, food and water if we need them , so this kit was selected and the bag was custom made. by Possum Tough Gear who as far as I'm concerned is an expert in the world of outdoor survival gear and what I really like about the case is that it's waterproof, it's waterproof except because of this little piece at the end of the zipper that will allow a little bit of water to pass through if you submerge it, but overall this is not going to have a lot of moisture in it, it has an easy pull handle and then the case itself is bright orange , so this is great. as a marker, if you want to point someone out, hang it on a tree as a marker, something like that, the bag actually has a use going into the bag, there are several really interesting things here, this is a Gerber paraframe knife, this knife, here it is. lightweight, it's relatively cheap and high quality, so there's just one quick and easy utility knife here.

I have about 15 feet of bank line, this is bank line, it's waterproof, it's very, very strong and a little better than your standard paracord based on strength. possum gear, this is really good for stringing up a shelter or, you know, tying something down, whatever, the uses of string are endless. Going into the kit a little deeper, you have a fire steel, so this type is only used to start a fire. There are a couple more fire devices here, but this one will give you the initial spark and start if you don't have a lighter or no other way to do it, and then this one has a cord where I can throw it. around my neck and I don't have to carry the whole kit if that's not on the cards on the side in the same vein as lighting a fire, we have a standard bic lighter now removed the child safety lock so you don't have to press it, so if your hands are really cold, it's easy to get that spark and then you tie a rubber band around it so the throttle key can't be pressed on this kit and waste fuel before we really need it.

It's really easy to remove and start a fire. Now we have a lot of different tinder plugs. These types are essentially waxed cotton and you pull them apart, it will create tinder to start a larger flame, so if you are using the spark. or the lighter, this will get you to that point where you can start burning larger items and actually light the fire on the back of the kit and as far as I'm concerned one of the most important items here it's the only one. survival blanket this is a very heavy duty mylar tarp really great for creating a windbreak, a shelter or even just wrapping around yourself to preserve heat the inside is a silver material and then the outside is this orange color you can also use as a flag if you are trying To invite someone over or draw someone's attention to the water, we have a bunch of purification tablets.

Now these are only good if you actually have something to put the water in, so he has also supplied several little quart size bags that will stand up. The ones themselves seal themselves and what you can do is fill them with water and start the purification process, leave them and then you will have drinking water for a long period of time if we decide to leave the fuselage or walk around ourselves, which is not something we do Most of the time, we can grab them, put them on, and carry them with us instead of being beholden to the stream or water source we found right on site, last but not least.

It's a Brunton compass. This is a relatively high-end compass. He can give you directions. I have a bit of navigation skills and we have some more detailed maps on the helicopter, so if we have to navigate our way out of a situation like this. Is there? All of these things are super lightweight and are really just the necessities. You have your stuff to start fires. Build shelters. Keeps you warm and then to purify the water. Everything else, in my opinion, is something you don't need. Flight weight. something real to fly with us, you have to weigh less than 220 pounds fully loaded with your helmet jacket and everything you're wearing so that adds up quickly, plus this is something we carry with us every day and if it's uncomfortable I'll use , I'm going to stop using it, so I left it there, I forgot about it, it may seem like a lot, but I haven't really noticed this kit on me regularly, that's all I have for this video, I really hope.

To make more detailed hemming videos, I want to take a helicopter tour, but there's a lot of red tape to jump through and I want to make sure I'm respectful of my employer and don't do anything they disapprove of. So I'm working on getting permission to do all that in the meantime. If you have any questions about anything I showed you today, leave them in the comments below and I'll see you next week.