A day in the life of Athlone's lifesaving heroes
The door opens, I shudder and my hair flies into my face.
I'm gripped to my seat and I feel my knuckles clench and whiten, and the butterflies in my stomach are getting so big they are about to climb out amid the growing din of the blades. But Cpl Diarmaid Corcoran doesn't even flinch as he makes his way out to the ledge to prepare for landing at UCH Hospital in Galway.
While he is firmly strapped into the helicopter, for one who is afraid of heights, I'm in complete awe!
This is certainly not a normal day in the office, no, because I'm on board the Air Corps 112 emergency air ambulance based in Custume Barracks on a gloriously sunny autumn day.
While the patient does not exist on this training flight, the guys working in this vital service deal with real-life scenarios almost daily.
Today’s crew of two pilots, an Advanced Paramedic, an EMT crew man, along with two technicians on the ground are part of the Emergency Aeromedical Service (EAS) which first began in June 2012 following the closure of Roscommon Hospital, and initially the main area of focus was Mayo, Roscommon and Clare.
However, as Pat Moran, the Advanced Paramedic from the National Ambulance Service on board explains on a foggy Thursday, there is hardly a place they haven't been to six years later as part of the seven-day-a-week service run by the Air Corps and the National Ambulance Service.
“Mayo is probably on the leaderboard for most visits but there is virtually nowhere we haven't been,” he says as the crew lead me into their operation room for a tour and to get an idea of how it all works.
“Our calls are generally one third trauma, one third medical and one third cardiac - the vast majority of which are transferred to Galway,” he adds.
The big advantage of this service is what he describes is effectively a “ridiculously fast” ambulance for a stroke or cardiac victim in say, Belmullet, and a higher level of care for a trauma victim who gets to a specialist centre much quicker than on our bumpy roads.
For STEMI (heart attacks) patients 90 minutes is the important time for treatment, so if you’re talking about West Mayo, there’s really no way a regular ambulance will get you to hospital in time, he maintains.
“Our response time is five to eight minutes to lift-off from taking the call,” he says, adding that the air ambulance is tasked at the same time as the regular ambulance by dispatch according to the seriousness of the call. If not required they are later stood down.
“Every call is dynamic, there are a lot of variables,” Pat, who lives in Roscommon, admits. “The more information we have the better we achieve,” he says, explaining that the average flight time is 20 minutes. To give me an idea, he says the chopper can make it to Kenmare in 55 minutes.
Lt Frankie Mohan, the co-pilot, chips in that they are dealing with the most serious cases like farm accidents in remote areas, traffic accidents and quad bike accidents.
“We could be on a training flight and get a call and we don't know what we are going to,” he says, of the ever-changing nature of the job.
But what happens if someone in the National Ambulance Service takes a call from someone who doesn’t know where they are?
Well, a clever member of the Air Corps came up with a fantastic solution using a text sent to the person’s phone which picks up their location to within 20 feet! LocateMe112 is now a standard tool across the ambulance service.
“I can say for sure since I started seven years ago that there are people here that wouldn’t have been without this service,” Pat Moran stresses, recalling the satisfaction of bringing a mother-of-three in her 30s who had suffered a stroke who was not responding to medication to Beaumont and the satisfaction of hearing she was up eating toast the next morning.
Unsurprisingly, weather plays a huge part in their service. Indeed, on the morning of my visit the service is grounded because of heavy fog.
Low cloud and heavy rain can pose problems too for visibility but they are adamant that they will not take chances, constantly checking detailed updates from Met Eireann which come in every 15 minutes.
Up in the air
It has been a busy week so far for the service which dealt with several calls to Galway hospital, including a horse-riding accident in Tipperary. While a call didn’t come in on the day I visited, the guys did simulate one for a training flight, which showed how they deal with life-threatening situations that all of us hope never to be involved in.
The whole process begins as Pat takes a call from the National Ambulance Service dispatch in relation to an equine accident in Ahascragh.
Swinging quickly into action, Frankie takes the coordinates and opens the health atlas operated by the HSE on a large screen to pinpoint where exactly the location is and then the potential or past landing sites, the locations of any obstructions such as power lines, the access for a patient in a stretcher and what kind of journey time they are looking at.
GAA or soccer pitches are often used as landing points as there is an extra layer of safety with no obstructions in the way.
At the same time, Diarmaid plots on a paper map the travel time, in this calculating around ten minutes to the site, and as all of this is happening Jason starts up the helicopter.
It’s deliberate that the pilot won’t know the nature of the call as it leaves the emotions out it, Pat explains, saying that in this particular instance the location is remote and a land ambulance will not get to it.
Afterwards, the lads kit up and within minutes of taking the call we all proceed to the Augusta Westland helicopter which costs €14 million and travels an eye-watering 280 km an hour. With my safety demonstration completed, we’re away.
The first thing that hits you once you step inside is the noise (which you get used to surprisingly quickly) and the space; I was thinking very cramped, but the stretcher in the middle of the floor with seats either side really brings it home to you what you are doing here. This is not a pleasure flight, this is life-saving stuff.
Pat Moran tells me afterwards that the ambulance is fully equipped and has all equipment/drugs that a regular vehicle has, to help stabilise a patient, give pain relief and give as much information as possible to treatment centre in the hospital to aid an diagnosis.
With nose up, checks complete, and the door closed, we leave the vast barracks and the Shannon behind to quickly become specks as the patchwork nature of our beautiful landscape opens up ahead.
Within a matter of minutes the stone walls of the west stretch out as far as the eye can see and my comfortable view leaves me mesmerised as I pick up landmarks and farmers doing everyday tasks in their tractors. Little do they know I have my eye on them from the sky from 1,000 feet above.
During the flight which is surprisingly smooth, pilot Jason and co-pilot Frankie are constantly talking, doing checks, watching out for the unknown, monitoring speed and fuel on the endless amount of buttons in front of them.
As they get closer to the field in Ahascragh in amongst telling me things to look out for and a small bit of banter, they monitor the land before the door is opened and Diarmaid strapped to the roof dangles out on the ledge as earth comes closer checks for obstacles and tries to ascertain if the land is firm enough for landing.
All good, we pick up our injured passenger, and are on our way to Galway.
This is where the medical training really kicks in and as Diarmaid says it’s immensely “fulfilling and rewarding” to be able to give the benefit of their experience and let the patient know they are in safe hands until they arrive in the specialist centre.
Back up in the air again, within a little over ten minutes Galway traffic comes into view, and the cityscape is quickly upon us as the pilots expertly manoeuvre us to the helipad at the hospital with a path specially lain for the stretcher to be quickly brought inside.
“Quite often they (patients) come back to visit and the vast majority have no recollection of the flight whatsoever,” Advanced Paramedic Pat Moran explains afterwards, saying they see them at their very worst, and to see them at their best with their families is the fuel they need to work hard because they know it is making a difference.
“That (visit) gives you the extra juice to keep going and do a good job,” he ends smiling.
A friend of mine always salutes the helicopter when he sees it leaving Costume Barracks such is his admiration for what they are doing. I'll be doing the same from now on!