What’s up with the blue-and-white helicopter next to Catskill Regional Medical Center?

Flight nurse Tanya Gushin and Rich Willey, medical base supervisor, in the helicopter that's based adjacent to Catskill Regional Medical Center.

What’s up with the blue-and-white helicopter next to Catskill Regional Medical Center?

Well, it may surprise you that inside that one-story gray structure next to the landing pad, there is one helicopter pilot, one registered nurse and one medic living round the clock and ready to go at a moment’s notice.

They all have separate bedrooms and lockers and a shared kitchen, living room, two bathrooms, a laundry room, food pantry, stock room for medications and a decontamination room.

“Basically, it’s set up like a firehouse,” says Tanya Gushin, 29, flight nurse with LifeNet, who runs the medical helicopter service. “We bake a lot of cookies around here.”

The nurses and medics work 24 hours on, 24 hours off, 24 hours on and then have five days off. The pilots work 12-hour shifts. There are four pilots, four nurses and four medics on rotation.

It also may surprise you that none of the crew are employed by Catskill Regional Medical Center: They all work for Air Methods, LifeNet’s parent company, the largest air medical provider in the world.

When a call comes in, the LifeNet crew can be in the air in as little as seven minutes.

“Most everything is already in the helicopter, and we are in our flight suits, so we just grab our helmets and head out the door,” says Gushin. “We do a quick 360-degree walk around the helicopter, the pilot runs through his standard aviation checklist and then it takes three minutes to warm it up.”

The helicopter crew heads out to 30-40 calls a month and has responded to stabbings, shootings, snowmobile and ATV accidents, car accidents, falls with significant injuries, heart attacks and strokes over the years.

Although based at Catskill Regional, the helicopter coverage includes Sullivan County and parts of Ulster, Orange and Delaware counties in New York and Wayne and Pike counties in Pennsylvania, as well. Patients can be flown to hospitals as far away as Albany, Scranton or Westchester.

“This is a very safety-conscious operation,” says Gushin. “Our slogan is ‘three to go and one to say no’ which means all three crew members have got to agree that it’s safe to fly. But if just one crew member is not comfortable with it, we don’t take off.”

Weather can be the biggest obstacle to flying, so they constantly monitor the local conditions.

“Once we are in the air, the local fire department is in charge of the landing zone,” says Gushin. “They set up a 100 by 100 area clear of obstructions such as wires and trees, and mark it off with cones. Then the pilot brings us down between the cones.”

“We’ve landed in fields and parking lots and on highways and Route 17,” she says. “Sometimes they land in remote spots and we end up jumping over streams to get to the victim.”

“Does it ever get old?” Gushin asks herself. “Well, I’ve only been doing this since May, but other nurses say they are still excited about their job even 10 years later.”

“You know, when I first started, I was afraid of heights. But after one flight, I was hooked,” she says. “And flying has given me an appreciation of how beautiful the Hudson Valley really is.”

Story and photos:  http://www.recordonline.com
 

Flight nurse Tanya Gushin gets her flight helmet out of a locker at the helicopter facility at Catskill Regional Medical Center.