Case Western Reserve University’s Ebersbach Academic Center for Flight Nursing will bring air medical transport responders from around the world to campus for the inaugural Ebersbach Flight Nursing Summit.
The daylong event is Tuesday, May 5, in the first floor lounge in the nursing school.
Stephanie Steiner, director of the Dorothy Ebersbach Academic Center for Flight Nursing at CWRU’s Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, expects the conference to attract as many as 100 people who care for and transport the critically ill or injured from emergencies or unusual scenarios to acute-care hospitals.
Experts will talk about different models of care used in the industry across the globe and who have unique experiences in large scale scenarios from war and major disasters to terrorism—all extraordinary circumstances from which medical transport teams can learn, Steiner said.
Attendees will learn about a range of topics, from the physical challenges of caring for patients in a confined helicopter fuselage to coping with the emotional aftermath of a major event.
Among the guest speakers will be:
Ivan Ortega Deballon, Flight NP, LLB, MSc, associate professor at the Hi-Fi Sim Center and on the faculty of medicine and health sciences a the Universidad de Alcala de Henares in Madrid. Deballon will draw from his experiences working on the Helicopter Emergency Medical Service and ground Mobile Intensive Care Unit in Madrid. He was among those called to respond to 2004 terrorist bombings on trains in Madrid, and was sent to Indonesia after the catastrophic tsunami that same year.
Andrea Robertson, president and CEO of STARS (Shock Trauma Air Rescue Society) and STARS Foundation, will provide a perspective on how her program delivers Canadians in three provinces (Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan) safe, rapid and specialized emergency medical services, air-lifting the critically ill and injured and transporting them to medical facilities.
Kimberlie A. Birever, LTC, AN, chief of Critical Care Nursing Services at the San Antonio Military Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, and Benilani M. Pineda, CCRN, RN, CPT, AN, director of the Joint Enroute Care Course for the United States Army School of Aviation Medicine at Fort Ruckers, Ala. They will share experiences as members of the U. S. Army Nurse Corp and Enroute Critical Care Nurse. Pineda spent more than 300 combat hours in nine months during a deployment to one of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan, the Helmand Province. She helped evacuate U.S. and allied military forces from the field to medical facilities.
To register or learn more, visit flightnurse.case.edu.