Doctors want answers about whether and where emergency helicopters can land at the new Landspítali hospital. Close to 40 minutes could pass from the time a helicopter lands, until a patient reaches medical care.
Doctors are concerned that there will be no landing pad for emergency helicopters at the new Landspítali hospital. That could mean a step backwards in health services, says an intensive care doctor.
The new Landspítali is one of the most expensive construction projects in Icelandic history and operations there are meant to be fully underway before the end of 2030. However, one thing has not been decided: whether and where there will be a landing pad for helicopters.
At present, Landhelgisgæslan (Icelandic Coast Guard) helicopters land with patients in two places in Reykjavík. One is the landing pad at the hospital in Fossvogur. Most patients go there and the distance from the pad to the hospital is 50 metres. Others are taken to Landspítali at Hringbraut – where the new hospital is rising and where all patients will go within five years.
“These are transfers of sick people,” says Sigurjón Örn Stefánsson, anaesthesiologist and intensive care doctor at Landspítali and helicopter doctor.
He explains that if the helicopter lands at the Landhelgisgæslan shelter at Reykjavíkurflugvöllur – the capital’s domestic airport – the patient must then be taken by ambulance to Landspítali at Hringbraut. This is a distance of about three kilometres and the time it takes varies depending on traffic and road conditions.
That is only half the story, moreover, because beyond the travel time there is much to consider.
These are transfers of sick people. It takes this time to move them first from the helicopter into the ambulance, then drive this route, and then transfer the patient again from the ambulance into the hospital… These are patients who have been connected to all kinds of monitoring equipment, they have intravenous lines and various things which cannot be disturbed.
In his work as a helicopter doctor, Sigurjón has timed every part of the process, from the moment a helicopter lands in Nauthólsvík until the patient is under medical care at Landspítali at Hringbraut. And that time is on average 37 minutes, according to his calculations.
There is no space for a helicopter pad on the plot of the new hospital. There have been ideas about placing it on the roof of one of the buildings, but representatives of Nýr Landspítali (New Landspítali) say that no decision has yet been taken.
Earlier this year, Alma Möller, the minister of health, said that she believed the pad needed to be closer to the hospital.
Sigurjón says that doctors and other healthcare staff are uneasy while no solution has been found.
We are worried. That is the case. Now it is so that there are only five years until the new hospital opens. That may sound like a long time but it is not a long time. We would like to get answers and, for example, would like to know whether a helicopter pad is even going to be built, which is not clear today.
Sigurjón says it would be unacceptable if the outcome were that the nearest landing site for a helicopter were Nauthólsvík once the new Landspítali opens.
If we were throwing tens of billions into this construction and this facility but our patients who arrive by helicopter were left with poorer service than before – that would be dreadful and in fact completely unacceptable.
Source: Ruv.is
