Show Notes
As young Draidyn Wollmann fights for life beneath the cutting deck of a stalled industrial mower, emergency responders rush to his aid and STARS is dispatched from more than 60 km away. A ground paramedic soon discovers that a blade from the mower is embedded in the boy's chest and an arm is mostly severed. Responders wonder how they're going to remove the mower without causing further damage. Watch the ground paramedic and STARS transport physician discuss the challenge in a bonus video at https://stars.ca/missionready.
More from Mission Ready
Dr. Megan McElheran, a clinical psychologist who specializes in helping emergency responders, talks through the brain science behind mental health and emphasizes the data-driven importance of looking after it, particularly in the emergency response field. We also hear from Ryan Collyer, the former advanced care paramedic Dr. McElheran hired to run the Before Operational Stress program she founded. Watch Ryan and Dr. McElheran talk about their core considerations in a bonus video at https://stars.ca/missionready.
For the first time, we hear directly from Draidyn his recounting of the rescue response that ultimately saved his life. Remarkably, he remembers a lot of what happened as community members, firefighters, police, first responders, and STARS crew members worked together to save his life. He even remembers parts of his arrival at the city hospital. Watch Draidyn and his mom walk around the incident scene in a bonus video at https://stars.ca/missionready.
STARS founder Dr. Greg Powell passed away very recently, leaving behind an incredible legacy of improving pre-hospital trauma care throughout Western Canada. He was instrumental in STARS launching in 1985, and now, more than 60,000 missions later, we're reflecting on that remarkable accomplishment. We're releasing a bonus episode we originally published in Season 1 of Mission Ready, focusing on how STARS began and how it grew.