Some patients in the direst of emergencies can‘t get to a trauma center. They may be pinned in the wreckage of a car, for example. That‘s when a specially qualified emergency medical services physician from Upstate University Hospital may be dispatched to the scene.

Listen: Dr. Cooney gives interview about the team

Members of Upstate‘s EMS & Disaster Medicine Physician Response Team carry pagers 24 hours a day like volunteer firefighters. They take turns being on call, driving the team‘s white Ford Expedition whenever summoned by the Onondaga County 911 Center. It‘s a community service that Upstate provides without charge to individual patients.

While overseeing patient care, the physicians – all of whom are professors at Upstate – provide real-time feedback to paramedics and emergency responders, explains Derek Cooney MD, the team‘s medical director.

He says the team is activated for crises both large and small. Four physicians responded to the scene of the Megabus crash on the Onondaga Lake Parkway, which killed four and injured 23 people in September 2010. Physicians have been called to car wrecks to assess whether limb amputations were necessary. (They haven‘t been.) Physicians have also been called to the scene of psychiatric emergencies, in which someone is refusing medical care.

“It sometimes helps law enforcement and EMS (Emergency Medical Services) to get on the same page if the physician comes out,” Cooney explains.

The team staffs the infirmary at the New York State Fair and provides medical oversight at  the Ironman 70.3 Syracuse, the Empire State Marathon and other large-scale events. Mostly they respond within Onondaga County, but Cooney says they could respond to adjacent counties if their services were needed.

Their truck contains equipment and medications not available on ambulances. “We‘re providing services that nobody else can.”

Listen: Dr. Cooney gives interview about the team

Research

Upstate‘s emergency physicians are involved in a variety of studies. Three projects underway include:

1. Examination of the time between when a patient arrives by ambulance at the emergency department and when the patient is removed from the stretcher and the paramedic gives a report to a nurse.


2. A study of how long patients are kept on backboards, since backboards are uncomfortable and can cause sores. “If we can figure out ways to reduce the time, we can do a lot of good, for our elderly patients especially,” Cooney says.


3. Testing of an advanced airway device that uses a fiber optic stylet and digital images to improve the paramedic‘s ability to quickly and accurately insert a breathing tube down a patient‘s trachea, or windpipe.