Real “Flying intensive care units”, the Hospital planes made it possible to ferry the six most seriously injured patients to Quebec four times faster than by road during the attack in Amqui Monday night.
• Also read: ‘Everyone is Amqui’: Legault promises to do more for mental health
• Also read: “My wife, I owe her everything, she saved my life”: this couple from Amqui avoided death to the last
• Also read: “It froze my blood”: relatives of a victim in Amqui had a bad feeling
Quebec has four aircraft capable of providing this service through the Quebec Aeromedical Evacuation Program (ÉVAQ).
“It’s a bit like a flying ICU, which means almost anything you can do in a nursing ward at a tertiary center you can do practically on board our planes, except of course for some more advanced techniques,” affirms the program’s medical director , dr Simon kid.
Of the 12 victims originally admitted to Amqui Hospital, six patients, including two children, required further care at Enfant Jesus Hospital.
While it takes more than four hours by road between Amqui and Quebec, a flight between Mont-Joli (the nearest airport) and the capital takes between 30 and 50 minutes.
But every minute counts, especially in the case of severe traumatologies. “The faster you get there, the greater the chances of survival, of course,” emphasizes Dr. Child.
Early warning
The paramedic wanted to emphasize “the quality of the work done by the medical teams” at Amqui, who were quick to issue an “advance warning” that several patients were likely to need urgent air transport.
“A call like this is extremely useful because it allows us to prepare. A plane that had just landed in Montreal with two doctors and a nurse on board was immediately put on stand-by after being deployed to Nunavik.
Another plane was then mobilized in Quebec. “As they say, the timing was still excellent for us. […] As soon as the inquiries were received, the two planes took off immediately,” says the chief physician. A third flight was later performed by a different aircraft.
Not always easy
In these situations, caregivers act with the utmost rigor and professionalism, but are not insensitive to the human drama unfolding before them, and even more so when children are involved.
“Obviously that picks us up a bit more, but if you’re on the plane I’d tell you it’s a bit like ‘The show has to go on.’ We are really very focused,” reports Dr. child who was not on the flights himself on Monday evening.
ÉVAQ transports more than 2,000 patients per year by air ambulance, but “it is certain that six requests from patients arrive at the same time, it is still not frequent, especially in the same place,” he says.
The aeromedical evacuation program in brief
- Founded in 1981
- 4 Quebec-based aircraft (2 Challenger and 2 Dash-8)
- In 2021-2022, 2,492 patients were transported by hospital plane (for urgent evacuations) and 5,338 by shuttle plane (for scheduled evacuations of semi-urgent cases).
- 46 doctors and 25 nurses are assigned to this service
- Hospital planes can carry between 2 and 3 patients
- Three flights were operated between Mont-Joli and Quebec on Monday to transport six injured people to Amqui
Source: CHU of Quebec