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The Air Ambulance

Emily C. was seven in the summer of 2006. She was being babysat by her
grandparents in Surrey when she found herself under the kitchen table with a
metal file in one hand and the female end of an extension cord in the other. She
tried to plug the file into the electrical cord, and eventually succeeded. Emily‘s
grandmother, wondering where the little girl was, led a frantic search finally to
find her “in a state of collapse unconscious, non-responsive,” recounts Howard
Peet, a British Columbia Air Ambulance critical care paramedic, who remem-
bers a call he will never forget.

“This is a call where everything, | mean everything, went according to
the book."

Not only was the book followed to the letter in Emily's case, it was a new
and better book. Beginning the previous July 1, a new level of response became
available to patients like her. The Autolaunch Protocol (ALP) trial enabled 911
dispatchers to call upon both ground ambulances and the Vancouver-based air
ambulances and their flight paramedics as needed. The ALP trial was typical of
progress in this fast-developing profession.

Emily's grandmother called 911 at 12.33 p.m. on July 19. “When the dis-
patcher received the call,” Peet savs, the first official responder at the house-

EO OO