Staff from Children’s Hospital Colorado came to Billings Thursday to help flight nurses and intensive care staff from Billings Clinic and St. Vincent Health Care learn new skills.
These healthcare professionals from Colorado often work with patients who are seriously ill or injured – or those in delicate situations, like premature birth.
The NICU Flight Education Day included lectures, and hands-on skills sessions.
Scenarios focused on included newborn resuscitation and stabilizing patients before flight.
"Most of the Montana area we service is very rural and so we don’t see a lot of premature delivery, so this is very important to us. We don’t get the exposure like we used to get like when I was living in a inner city, and we’d see premature deliveries all the time. They’re not as frequent as we see out here so to get extra hands-on skills and training is very important as we fly out to some of these smaller regions to care for these premature infants," said Dr. Jeffrey Cooper, a Billings Clinic neonatologist.
