This joint venture creates the only municipally operated Emergency Pre-hospital Air Ambulance Service in the Commonwealth of Virginia staffed with career and volunteer medics. Allowing EMS to provide the highest level of pre-hospital emergency care for its citizens anyway. Whether caring for a patient after a serious auto accident, or moving a critically ill pre-hospital patient to tertiary intensive care, Flight medics, working in partnership with our Flight Crew to ensure our service is first class and SAFETY is always our primary focus of all personnel.
Selected from the finest pre-hospital care clinicians from across the region, our Flight medics have each spent many years working in the emergency services arena. They have completed the rigorous curriculum, as well as the courses of Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS), Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS), and either pre-hospital or Basic Trauma Life Support (PHTLS or BTLS).
Once accepted into our training program, the flight medic candidate undergoes a rigorous orientation and training process designed to augment their already considerable skills. This expanded scope of practice is designed to bring a higher level of care to each air medical mission, and includes skills such as advanced airway management, rapid sequence induction, central venous access, and a wide array of medications usually reserved for the hospital setting.
Many of the medics serve as faculty in regional training programs, and take advantage of specialized continuing education programs in Advanced Pediatric Life Support, Advance Trauma Life Support, and procedure labs.