On any given day, 75 to 100 medical staffers from Nellis Air Force Base are working inside University Medical Center in Las Vegas, treating the kinds of injuries they may one day face on a battlefield, FOX5 reported late Thursday.
How the partnership works
Nellis started looking at civilian hospitals for hands-on training more than a decade ago and settled on UMC, Southern Nevada’s only Level 1 Trauma Center. UMC says the arrangement is now the largest military-civilian medical partnership in the country.
Air Force doctors, nurses and technicians work side by side with UMC staff on gunshot wounds, burns and other combat-type trauma. A big focus is stopping bleeding, which Col. Dallas Hansen, who leads UMC’s Office of Military Medicine, called the leading cause of preventable death in wartime.
An ICU in the back of a cargo plane
Among those training at UMC are Critical Care Air Transport Teams. These small teams fly into combat zones, pick up injured U.S. service members and contractors, and keep providing intensive care for the entire flight out. Hansen described a team as “an intensive care unit on the back of a big cargo plane.” Team members told FOX5 the hospital shifts have built their confidence both on the ward and in the air.
What it means for locals and visitors
The program is not just a military benefit. UMC pulmonary critical care physician Dr. Jeremy Kilburn said Las Vegas does not have enough doctors, nurses or graduate medical training programs, and that the Nellis staff help fill that gap. He said pulling them out would leave a huge hole. For anyone who ends up in UMC’s trauma center, whether a resident, a tourist or a driver hurt in a crash, there is a good chance Air Force medical staff are part of the team caring for them.