When Chris Baker joined Arizona-based TriState CareFlight as
its medical program director less than a month ago, one of his first objectives
was to help improve his new program's overall safety and AMRM (Air Medical
Resource Management). He knew exactly where to turn.
"I worked with Rich Obertots and ThinkThroughTools while I was with my last
program," says Baker. "He's always been great to work with and is very
accommodating to your needs. Since I was already familiar with his 365 Safety
AMRM™ on-demand software, I really wanted to jump on the opportunity to go
forward with this when I came here."
In addition to its six rotor and two fixed wing bases in Arizona, the
independent air medical provider also has bases in New Mexico and Colorado.
TriState, with its three fixed wings and seven rotor wings, covers an area as
far west as California, north to Durango, Colorado and south to Santa Fe. Safety
training is critical for the program. One of the reasons that Baker elected to
go with 365 Safety AMRM™ was because it solidifies the safety training crew
members receive.
"It makes people practice what they learned instead of just reading it or just
doing a test on it," he says. "You're putting this into practice in a simulated
situation on a daily basis. Many programs train, maybe once a year, and then
they don't really use it. With 365 Safety AMRM™, this kind of training can save
a life or save the life of your crew members."
365 Safety AMRM™ covers the essentials of Safety AMRM for air medical transport
and is customized for each mode of critical care transport. It enables flight
crew members to become knowledgeable in identifying existing and potential
threats and develop, communicate, and implement plans and actions to mitigate
perceived threats.
The on-demand software provides short daily Safety AMRM training and testing
that's included with each shift brief. Each day, crew members are provided
learning lessons, scenarios and quizzes related to their duties. The process
takes 8 to 10 minutes and is integrated into each shift brief to assure daily
consistency and to make it part of the daily culture and operations. This tool
serves as a key recurrent training process for staff.
"I like the fact that you can do 365 Safety AMRM™ anytime, 24/7, and you can
involve anyone you want, no matter where you are, and do as many scenarios,"
says Baker.
Baker says that TriState is going through the initial set up process right now
and expects to begin using 365 Safety AMRM™ in the next couple weeks.
"One of the outcomes that I'm hoping to see is better communication among the
clinical providers and just better overall operations because people are going
to be practicing better communication every day," says Baker.
Previously, TriState, like many other programs, had been conducting safety
training once a year, which is not nearly enough, says Baker.
"Safety training should occur daily," he says. "You can never do too much in
implementing safety training. We can always do more to improve it. 365 Safety
AMRM™ is something everybody should be doing nationwide. Practicing safety every
day is something we should always be doing."
Obertots, CEO of ThinkThroughTools, says that he is looking forward to working
with Baker and the entire team at TriState CareFlight to implement daily
on-demand AMRM learning and knowledge verification.
"We're highly enthused to have TriState CareFlight as part of the growing family
of leaders and innovators using 365 Safety AMRM™," he says. "In particular,
Chris Baker was one of our first advocates when we were in development. It was
so encouraging then that he understood the daily positive effects 365 Safety
AMRM™ could have. Now he and his team are leading to put this in action!"
