Trauma Hawk Aero-Medical Program - General Information - How The Traumahawk Is Dispatched

How The Traumahawk Is Dispatched

To the Palm Beach County Fire-Rescue Communications Center (dispatch), the Traumahawk Hangar is known as "Station 82". When alerted to standby for an incident, the crews are paged as "TH A" for the primary crew, and "TH B" for the secondary crew, once aircraft is requested to respond, the Traumahawks are referred to as "Traumahawk 1" or "Traumahawk 2". They receive pages and alerts just like every other fire station in the county. When Fire-Rescue arrive on scene (vehicle accident, misc. traumatic injury, fall, etc.), Paramedics will asses the situation, and request that the Traumahawk be dispatched to the scene, via portable radios. In some cases, the dispatcher may automatically dispatch Traumahawk based on information that a 9-1-1 caller will give when calling in an emergency. The dispatcher will then page Traumahawk, and a crew will prepare for takeoff. Unless the call meets criteria for an "auto-fly" (confirmed shooting, multiple calls for a bad vehicle crash, etc.), the crew does not fly until on-scene Paramedics verify the situation to meet either "Trauma Alert", "Cardiac Alert", or "Stroke Alert" criteria, and they are told to do so by Dispatch. Both of the helicopters, as well as each crew member have portable radios for communication. Each radio is programmed with miscellaneous channels and Talkgroups within the Palm Beach County Motorola Type II SmartZone Radio System. (wiki) These radios are used to communicate with dispatch, police, and Fire-Rescue Paramedic already on scene. Most often, they are used to get patient/stability information from Paramedics on the ground, before they arrive. Once the patient is on board, the crew will change their radio channel to the hospitals radio channel, to which they are transporting. This communication structure has been demonstrated numerous times in the T.V. Shows "EMERGENCY!" and "ER".