Saskatchewan Air Ambulance
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supporting rural physicians and their patients for 68 years
By Maria Derzko / Photocredit SAA First Officer Mark Psutka
“Two summers ago there was a multi-vehicle accident with
multiple patients involved,” says Dr. Reid McGonigle, EMS
Medical Director for Keewatin-Yatthee RHA and family physician to the residents of remote northern reserve, Ile-a-laCrosse, “Seven needed transportation to Saskatoon and two
of these were critically injured patients.”
The community of Ile-a-la-Crosse is almost 500 kilometers
from Saskatoon and timely land transport to a Saskatoon
hospital for any of its approximately 1600 residents is impossible.
“Saskatchewan Air Ambulance (SAA) came immediately to
pick up the two most acute patients and came back twice
to transport the others over the next few hours,” says Dr. McGonigle.
“It’s difficult to imagine how we would manage our most
challenging patients without SAA,” he adds, “There simply
are not any alternatives to SAA currently in place in our
province.”
Such scenarios are just part of the job for the staff and crew
of Saskatchewan Air Ambulance, the provincial air ambulance service and oldest non-military air ambulance service
in the world. Its flight nurses, critical car paramedics and
flight crew perform nearly 50 per cent of emergency and
nonemergency air patient transport in the province and
have been quietly serving the physicians of Saskatchewan
and their patients since 1946.
Equipped with three King Air 200 fixed-wing aircraft, a crew
that includes flight nurses, advance care paramedics, captains and first officers, operating 24 hours per day, 365 days
per year, SAA rushes to pick up patients at an average of
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SMA NEWS DIGEST | SUMMER 2014
275 knots (315 mph) - over double the speed of other air
ambulance services capable of red patient transport in the
province.
These versatile twin engine aircraft allow SAA to regularly
fly into communities as small as Maidstone and Unity, as remote as Wollaston Lake and Ile-a-la-Crosse, and as far away
as Vancouver, Edmonton and London, ON, in most weather
conditions. Their expert crew safely transported 1653 patients (1031 CTAS 1 & 2) last year – an average of 4.5 patients
per day - to tertiary care centres.
140 patients were transported out of Ile-a-la-Crosse alone
during that period where, according to Dr. McGonigle, he
and the other physicians in the community rely on the services of SAA for safe rapid transport of their patients anywhere from two to three times per week, up to two to three
times per day.
“SAA provides an absolutely essential service,” continues Dr.
McGonigle, “Due to geography and the distances involved
in a place like Saskatchewan, fixed-wing air transport is essential.”
The 500 km to the community is well out of range of the
STARS helicopter and the medical crew on other fixed wing
air ambulance services do not have the same level of critical
care training and experience as those at SAA, so they are not
an option for transporting critically ill or injured patients.
“The SAA staff do more than just transport patients,” emphasizes Dr. McGonigle, “They are highly-trained and experienced medical professionals who help to stabilize and
manage very sick and potentially unstable patients before
and during their transport to a more advanced level of care.”