Mercy Air teams brace for tragedies

Jen Lawson

Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2003 | 11:05 a.m.

Shauna Miller remembers the first emergency call she responded to as a Mercy Air flight nurse a year ago.

A 17-year-old boy who had been drinking alcohol crashed his car and suffered severe head trauma. He hadn't been wearing a seat belt.

"He had injuries he probably couldn't survive, but our job is to give them every opportunity to live," Miller said. The boy later died at the hospital.

Miller copes with the tragedies she sees daily by remembering a nugget of wisdom another flight nurse once shared with her: "Death is by invitation only."

That might be something she will tell herself often during the Christmas and New Year's weeks. It rivals summertime as one of the busiest times of year for Mercy Air, the sole provider for air ambulatory services in Southern Nevada.

"Over the holidays, the volume of work (is expected) to double," said Missy Greenlee, regional business director for Mercy Air. "Each base might do six or seven flights a day."

A total of 44 nurses, paramedics and pilots work out of Mercy Air bases in Las Vegas, Boulder City and Pahrump. The three Southern Nevada crews are dispatched an average of 3,000 times a year.

Mercy Air, based in Fontana, Calif., operates out of 12 sites in that state. The company acquired Southern Nevada's other helicopter emergency service, Flight for Life, in December 2001. As an independent provider, Mercy Air does not align itself with any particular hospital, allowing patients to be taken to the best hospital for their needs. Flight for Life was affiliated with Valley Hospital.

Mercy Air's Las Vegas crew responds to emergencies within 35 nautical miles but has flown as far as the Dumont Dunes near Barstow, Calif.; Death Valley National Park; Tonopah; and St. George, Utah, when needed.

Miller has "been to four states in one shift: Nevada, California, Utah and Arizona," she said.

The Las Vegas base is on Las Vegas Boulevard South, in a desert area near Interstate 15 and St. Rose Parkway. A three-person crew -- a registered nurse, paramedic and pilot -- are on duty around the clock, prepared to jump into the helicopter on just five minutes' notice.

Miller, 47, works two 24-hour shifts a week. While on duty she, the flight paramedic and pilot live in a modular home on the base.

Last week the paramedic was Steve Corleone, a paramedic for 11 years and a flight paramedic for four, and the pilot was Lindsey Brewer, an Army pilot for 24 years before coming to Mercy Air in 2001.

Miller was an emergency room nurse for 25 years in Southern California before moving to Las Vegas last year with her husband, a pilot. He also works for Mercy Air.

Corleone, 35, said he's been "mentally preparing" for the holiday season since Thanksgiving, going over scenarios in his head and thinking about what they'd do in different situations.

Most of the scenes they respond to are car crashes, and around the holidays, many are alcohol-related. Last year in Clark County 208 people died in 189 fatal crashes.

While waiting to be sent out, the crew on duty reads, watches television and takes naps, but that solitude could be shattered at any moment. The crew is notified via pagers through a dispatching center as to the nature of the emergency and where it's located.

"When they call us, it's very, very serious," Miller said.

Just that morning the crew flew to the scene of a fire at the Ashton Park Apartments on Escondido Street and picked up two injured children and tended to their injuries en route to University Medical Center. Fire personnel said the children had suffered burns and smoke inhalation.

The helicopter has the medical technology of an intensive care unit and is equipped to handle two patients. The nurse, the highest medical authority on the aircraft, works with the paramedic to stabilize the patients and get them to a hospital.

Miller and Corleone get down to business "like a well-oiled machine," she said. "You work quickly with your partner. ... Sometimes we don't even have to talk."

Around the holidays, car crashes with multiple victims are common because families tend to load into a vehicle and trek to relatives' homes.

For Miller the most heart-wrenching calls involve children, especially ones who die or suffer critical injuries because they weren't restrained while in a car. Crashes around the holidays tend to be harder on families, too.

"When you hear the family is on their way to grandma's house for Christmas, it's difficult," Miller said.

In the emergency room, patients are brought in and medical personnel may not have the entire story as far as the circumstances of the incident. But as a member of a medical flight crew, Miller and her co-workers see the whole scene -- a wrecked car with family members gathered around crying, for example.

The more they know, the more it affects them, they said.

The flight crew "seem to get a little more involved with our patients," Corleone said, and sometimes patients find ways to track them down and thank them.

Saving people's lives gives him a euphoric high, Corleone said. But he wishes the people he's helped didn't need his care in the first place. He wishes intoxicated people didn't get behind the wheel.

"I'd rather see them being taken home safely in a taxi than in a helicopter," Corleone said.