Guardsmen open Baghdad facility

  • Published
  • By Tech Sgt. Ruby Zarzyczny
  • 437th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM (AFPN) --  The 379th Expeditionary Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron has opened a 10-bed mobile medical staging facility near the military flightline at Baghdad International Airport. Facility workers there conduct joint service, coalition and civilian air evacuation missions.

In the field, after self-aid and buddy care, a patient needing additional medical attention goes into a battalion aid station or an Army combat support hospital. If the injury is serious enough the patient comes to the staging facility.

"The (facility) is a staging area for patients being evacuated out of the theater from Army combat support hospitals and into the aeromedical evacuation system," said Maj. Lynne Medley, 379th EAES commander deployed from the Tennessee Air National Guard's 118th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron in Nashville.

The facility has four flight nurses, one medical service corps officer, one administration airman, two radio operators and seven aeromedical evacuation technicians working around the clock. They are all guardsmen from the Nashville squadron, and they deployed to Baghdad IAP together.

"I love being here," said Master Sgt. Ken Quattlebaum, the 379th EAES noncommissioned officer in charge and first sergeant. "We've been training together for this kind of situation for two years, and when we got the call, they called the whole team and deployed us together. We've had two years to get to know each other, and if you were to throw different people together, they might not have been able to work together as well as we have."

According to Medley, it is critical for the team to work well together because it takes all of them to keep the mission going.

"About 80 percent of the patient movement to the (facility) is mostly at night because of the availability of planes," said Medley. "When (Joint Patient Movement Requirements Center officials in theater decide) a patient will move, the (facility workers) communicate by secure radio to coordinate the patient movement. Then we wait to hear the incoming choppers. Some of the patients need medical attendants to stay with them, and we can generate a crew to go with the patient and take care of them inflight."

Within the first two weeks, the airmen moved 74 litter patients, 169 ambulatory patients and 15 attendant patients.

"When the patients get here we check their vital signs, do a physical assessment, check and change bandages, check IV sites, and check to see if they need medications," said Medley.

"Once the patients are stabilized, we provide them with showers, toothpaste and cooled water, something many of the patients coming from the field haven't seen in months,” she said. “They can also take a trip into the 'care package' area … to select items they might need or want.

"We're also supporting the humanitarian side,” said Medley. "(People) will bring their patients here to stay where it's cool and readily accessible to the flightline."

The airport has two different areas, the military side and the civilian side, separated by a distance of about seven miles.

"The Iraqi civilians who are evacuated through the (facility) are put on the planes with the approval of the secretary of defense," said Medley. "An Iraqi civilian working with the Army was injured in an ambush was evacuated … recently. Many of the patients are evacuated to hospitals in Kuwait. The military patients are treated in Kuwait or sent on to (a) hospital in Germany."

The 10-bed facility here averages about 20 patients a day, and workers provide medical care to the residents of tent city while the expeditionary medical support teams are in the process of standing up.

"We work under stressful situations,” said Medley. "We have had (everyone) from a critical injury pilot to an injured 4-month-old baby. We know each other well, and that helps us cope with the stress."

"We have the best medical care and patient evacuation system in the world," said Quattlebaum. "Someone who is out there actually fighting can be confident that (he or she) will have the best medical treatment in the world, and we're part of that system."

"The (facility) will be here as long as the contingency operation is here," said Medley. "We're staying until September, but we're prepared to stay as long as we're needed." (Courtesy of Air Mobility Command News Service)