UNM’s Lifeguard team adding equipment, professionals

An accident on an electrical bucket truck has left a worker in a perilous condition. truck and van have collided and rolled over, and there are five children and more adults injured.

Those were some of the scenarios recently used to train the University of New Mexico Hospital’s Lifeguard team how to respond to deadly situations around the state. During the training, the roughly 50 physicians, nurses, paramedics and other health care professionals that are part of the program respond, often in the hospital’s helicopter or airplanes, and triage highfidelity mannequins that talk and bleed as well as actors.

They have to quickly check and see who is most in need of care.

“Training like that prepares the crews for the actual event. And unfortunately, it does happen,” said Amy Armbruster, a flight nurse and educator for Lifeguard.

The Lifeguard team at UNMH is an advanced group of highly trained health care workers. The team has had two fixed-wing airplanes, a helicopter and an ambulance. It recently added a second ambulance and there are plans to add another airplane to its fleet, and Armbruster said the hospital is regularly trying to recruit new members.

That investment, Armbruster said, is happening because of how critical the program is to the state.

“I think it just shows the commitment to the community and the state of New Mexico,” she said.

The Lifeguard program has been part of UNMH for more than 40 years. The team members go through training that includes clinical and simulation work, and all Lifeguard members have to get their national certification within one year of joining the team.

“We’re an incredibly advanced program. So just about anything that they can do in the (intensive care unit), or the emergency room, we can do in the back of our ambulance and in our helicopter and in our plane,” Armbruster said.

UNMH’s Lifeguard team has the ability to put someone on Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, while in flight. That’s a life-saving support procedure where a person’s blood is pumped out of the body and into a heart-lung machine where carbon dioxide is removed from the blood and oxygenated blood is pumped back inside the person.

“What is unique about Lifeguard is that we can actually fly out to various hospitals throughout the state of New Mexico, place people on bypass, and fly them back,” Armbruster said. “And we’ll do that on one of our planes, and we can bring them back here to the University of New Mexico Hospital.”

Lifeguard also has a children’s team that transports babies under 1 year old. The team also transports patients to hospitals in other large cities in the region like Denver, Colorado.

“We’re always really recruiting and looking for the next generation of critical care transport members,” she said.

The team tries to recruit highly trained health professionals, such as nurses with experience in an ICU or emergency room. Labor and delivery and burn unit professionals are also in high demand.

“At Lifeguard, we have the opportunity to fly both fixed wing and rotor in the same shift. We can do a scene close to the city and also go several states away,” Stephen NewKirk, a flight paramedic, said in a statement. “We fly all patient populations from premature newborns to adults. Being hospital-based opens up a lot of opportunities for hands-on experience.”

In addition to training and experience, the team also tries to recruit health care professionals who are instructors in their fields. Being part of the team also requires the ability to handle quickly jumping on a airplane or helicopter and responding to emergencies no matter the time or the weather.

“We’re trying to be as well-rounded as possible,” Armbruster said. “And all of us are a little bit of an adrenaline junkie”