For 40 years, UCAN has delivered critical care by air and ground

On a recent Monday, a maroon helicopter whirred on the roof of the University of Chicago Medicine’s Center for Care and Discovery, preparing to take off to the site of an accident that had been reported just minutes earlier. 

Veteran flight nurse Teri Campbell, MSN, RN, was ready.

Transported by pilot Jon Vollink from the UChicago Medicine Aeromedical Network, or UCAN, Campbell flew to Northwest Indiana. There, they picked up a child who had been struck by a vehicle and needed urgent transport to UChicago Medicine’s Level 1 Pediatric Trauma Center. 

Details about the accident were scant. So during the 10-minute flight, Campbell and fellow flight nurse, Mark Samora, BSN, RN, planned for everything they might encounter. 

“We always prepare for worst-case scenarios,” Campbell said. “Our preparation allows us to be ready for most clinical encounters, and it allows us to be nimble if the situation rapidly changes.”

Rapid transport and treatment

The case was one of nearly 900 air and ground medical transports performed annually by UCAN, which is the only hospital-based medical helicopter program in Chicago. 

In Indiana, the UCAN team landed on a soccer field where paramedics were waiting with the patient. Campbell and her partner worked quickly to assess and stabilize the child, before and during the flight to UChicago Medicine Comer Children’s Hospital. 

Patients traveling via UCAN helicopter benefit from the proximity of a rooftop helipad to specialized care in the hospital, as well as partnerships between the flight team and UChicago Medicine experts, said Candice Schaper, MSN, RN, chief flight nurse and administrative director for UCAN.

“Helicopter transport only exists for two reasons: One of those is speed, and the other is clinical expertise,” said Schaper, noting that the option can dramatically improve outcomes. “We're able to transport patients, even those requiring very critical life-sustaining therapy.

“That's something that not every transport team can do.”

‘Expands the reach of UChicago Medicine’

The idea for UCAN was first championed by former Emergency Medicine Chair Frank J. Baker, MD. It debuted on Dec. 16, 1983. 

At the time, about 50 helicopter air ambulances were in use nationwide, compared to roughly 1,000 dedicated medical helicopters today. Since UCAN’s conception, the program has transported an estimated 34,000 patients by air or ground.

The new field of air medical transport captured the interest of Ira Blumen, MD, in 1983, who was then an emergency medicine resident. By August 1987, Blumen was leading UCAN. He continues today as UCAN’s medical director and program director.

UCAN expands the reach of the University of Chicago Medical Center to patients that normally would not be able to get here, Blumen said.

Although helicopter trips directly to accident scenes spike in the summer, most flights are between hospitals, Blumen said. That usually entails bringing a patient to UChicago Medicine from a hospital that can’t provide the level of care or expertise needed for a critically ill or injured patient.

The extensive list of requirements for flight nurse candidates includes a minimum of five years of combined adult and pediatric critical care experience. About half of UCAN-transported patients are children.

Schaper recalled responding to the case of a young child who had been shot in the abdomen.

“We called back to the trauma team here at UChicago and said, ‘We think this kid needs to go to the operating room right away,’’ Schaper said. “We enjoy a wonderful partnership with our trauma surgeons and they trust our assessment. The trauma surgeon was waiting for us at the helipad, and we went directly together to the operating room.”

Life-sustaining treatment on board

A transport starts with a call from a referring physician, paramedic or 911 center to UCAN’s in-house 24-hour communication center known as UCAN Control.

UCAN’s twin-engine Airbus EC-145 helicopter can transport the entire spectrum of patients, from ailing newborns in an isolette to patients with heart or lung failure who are on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, Blumen said.

The helicopter can land in secure landing zones typically 100 feet by 100 feet, including hospital helipads or on a highway, parking lot or open field.

Pilots, Blumen said, are “exceptionally well trained and experienced" and the aircraft is equipped with additional safety features. 

Vollink, who is UCAN’s lead pilot, recalls navigating past a massive fallen highway sign structure to land at night on Interstate 80 to retrieve the driver of a vehicle involved in the accident.

“It was a chaotic scene but everything worked the way it was rehearsed,” he said.

Vollink was trained to fly Black Hawk helicopters for the Illinois National Guard and was deployed twice — to Iraq and Kuwait — where he flew medevac missions. Vollink and all UCAN pilots are employed by Air Methods, a large private operator of air medical services that also owns and maintains the UCAN helicopter.

Aircraft availability, weather conditions and other safety considerations come into play to determine whether UCAN can undertake a flight or if other options must be considered, including the highly specialized UCAN team going by ground ambulance.

UCAN Control is the point of contact for all pediatric transfers to Comer Children’s Hospital and most adult emergency cases destined for UChicago Medicine — whether by air or ground — Schaper said, noting that a referring physician ultimately decides how to transfer the patient. 

Legacy of critical care, compassion

UCAN works closely with local emergency services and the referring healthcare communities, and it hosts two annual conferences on critical care and trauma care.

The conferences, now approaching their 11th year, were the vision of Kelley Holdren, RN, MSN, UCAN’s chief flight nurse and administrative director from 2012 until 2023, when she died of rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare cancer. 

Blumen remembers Holdren as “a visionary leader” who transitioned the program and grew the UCAN flight nurse team from eight to 20. 

Safety in air and ground critical care transport was a priority for Holdren, who held leadership roles in several medical transport associations. She also helped coordinate the design and configuration of the medical interiors of UCAN’s helicopter and MedEx ambulance to ensure safe, efficient transport.

The entire UCAN team continues to uphold that legacy.

For Campbell, becoming a flight nurse was a dream since October 1995, when her first day working in a hospital emergency department coincided with the crash of a Metra train into a school bus. A medical helicopter brought three patients to her emergency room.

“The flight team was very much in control,” Campbell said. "They were very calm, they were making sense of chaos, and it was very impressive.”

Shortly after, she told her mother about a new career goal: “I want to be a flight nurse.”