RickInOz

High speed, sleep deprivation and motor vehicles.

Last night I had a very busy shift with 2 trauma calls. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts we will respond to serious accidents in the rural areas surrounding Adelaide and retrieve the patients to a metropolitan hospital by helicopter. Since we’ve moved to the airport our response time has reduced considerably, and we can now be airborne in as little as 5 minutes from “activation”.

The first call was to the Dukes Highway at Cooke Plains. A man in a Ford Ka had collided with a van travelling in the opposite direction. Since both vehicles were moving at about 100kph the energies involved were considerable.

The patient had not been wearing a seatbelt and so was thrown out during the crash. We found him in a field some 30 metres from his car. He was badly injured with a badly lacerated scalp and fractured humerus and pelvis. More concerning was his fluctuating level of conciousness suggesting a severe head injury. It is the first time I have had to intubate anyone by the side of the road at night, so the adrenaline was flowing. We then packaged him and departed for the Flinders Medical Centre.

Not long after returning to base we were activated again by SAAS Control. This time it was an roll-over truck accident up at Tarlee.

Fortunately he was not so badly injured with a fractured humerus and tibia. Our response was swift enough that we arrived almost at the same time as the ambulance road crew. We did a quick assessment of him and then it was time to return to The Royal Adelaide Hospital.

It is hard to know exactly what precipitated each accident. It is possible that both drivers were drowsy and simply lost control. Alcohol may also have played a part in the first accident. Either way both demonstrated that at high speed and at night there is little margin for error. That and the consequences of error can be devastating. I have become a far more cautious driver since I started doing retrievals, and last nights jobs really gave me cause for thought.

The media publicise these incidents, often with graphic detail, but it doesn’t seem to prevent the ongoing toll on the roads. While doing these jobs is challenging and satisfying from a professional point of view, and an airbourne trauma service is necessary, it is still a shame that such preventable incidents still occur.