NursiNg Without BouNdaries

DOROTHY EBERSBACH ACADEMIC CENTER

FOR FLIGHT NURSING

The Emergency Room Goes to the Patients

Car accidents aren’t planned near trauma centers. Heart attacks don’t happen next door to hospitals. Newborns don’t check the availability of neonatal intensive care units before their births.

With increasing healthcare costs, many healthcare facilities are minimizing their critical care and trauma services. Yet evidence indicates time and time again that proximity to tertiary care centers improves survivorship for the critically ill or injured.

Case Western Reserve University developed the world’s first flight nursing master’s degree program to extend the “golden hour”—the time that the seriously injured must receive immediate care to survive—and survive with good outcomes.

Acute care nurse practitioners (ACNPs) educated at Case Western Reserve and trained in flight nursing don’t wait for their patients to arrive at the hospital. They take the hospital to the patients to start intervention as early as possible.

The Dorothy Ebersbach Academic Center for Flight Nursing at Case Western Reserve UniversityAt the Dorothy Ebersbach Academic Center for Flight Nursing, ACNP flight nurse specialists are educated as advanced practice nurses who provide hospital-quality acute care to patients at the roadside, disaster sites, and other remote locations.

Founded in 2002 as the National Flight Nurse Academy—the world’s first flight nursing program—the pioneering center was renamed in 2011 in honor of aviator, nurse, and alumna Dorothy Ebersbach. Ebersbach served her country first as one of 1100 Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) and later as a public health nurse in central Florida.

The Dorothy Ebersbach Academic Center in Flight Nursing merges Ebersbach’s three passions: flying, nursing, and service.

Spreading our WingsIn 2008, FPB signed a landmark partnership with Japan’s Aichi Medical University to establish the first graduate-level acute care nurse practitioner flight nursing program in Asia. This collaboration will revolutionize nursing throughout Japan and enable its advanced practice nurses to confront medical emergencies with greater knowledge, autonomy, and skill in critical care.

Dorothy “Dot” Ebersbach was born in Pomeroy, Ohio in 1914, to Charles and Ellen Ebersbach, owners of a growing road construction company in Ohio and Florida. Her passion for adventure, learning, and service was evident early in life.

She earned her private pilot’s license in 1939, three years after she graduated summa cum laude from Ohio University with a bachelor’s degree in education, mathematics, and English. To celebrate, her father—who had moved the family and his company to Florida—gave her a Piper Cruiser: a three-seat, single-engine plane for her to ferry supplies statewide for the family business.

When the United States entered World War II, Ebersbach was one of only 1800 women selected from a pool of 25,000 applicants to the newly formed Women Airforce Service Pilots or WASP. She tested newly repaired airplanes and towed targets for the male anti-aircraft pilots to practice their dog fight skills.

At the time, WASP members were considered civilians rather than military personnel. They were not granted veteran status until 1977. In 2010, Ebersbach and her peers were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for their distinguished service to their country in its time of need.

Following the war, Ebersbach continued to serve others. She graduated from the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing in 1954 and joined the Hillsborough County Health Department in Tampa, Florida. She worked in the field of public health until her retirement in 1975.

Her final act of valor was the creation of the Dorothy Ebersbach Academic Center for Flight Nursing.

In 2010, Ebersbach and her peers were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for their distinguished service to their country in its time of need.

Dorothy Ebersbach NUR’54Aviator. Nurse. Pioneer. 1914-2011

Advancing Advanced Practice NursingThe Flight Nursing subspecialty builds on the core of Case Western Reserve’s ground breaking Acute Care Nurse Practitioner (ACNP) master’s degree program. Like all ACNPs, flight nurses make continuous diagnoses, prescribe medications, and give patients life-saving immediate interventions.

Flight nursing students also receive additional instruction within their unique clinical settings: state-of-the-art helicopters and jets equipped with the latest medical technology and moving at 15,000 to 30,000 feet above traditional healthcare environments.

Besides the regular MSN curriculum, these future flight specialists take advanced practice clinical courses with a concentration in flight nursing and participate in internships through the world-renowned Cleveland

Clinic among others. During the internship, students accompany flight teams on critical transport missions. They also attend the school’s renowned weeklong Flight Camp with its realistic disaster exercises and study in our flight nurse learning center.

Students and faculty also conduct evidence-based research on best practices for providing care in this dynamic environment. Through scientific inquiry, critical thinking, and leadership they are finding new ways to increase access to care for when and where it is needed most. Future endeavors for the Dorothy Ebersbach Academic Center for Flight Nursing include replicating this revolutionary healthcare model to help war causalities both military and civilian personnel.

Keeping It RealSometimes the classroom is not enough to prepare students for the real world.

Today’s reality includes terrorist attacks, natural disasters, and man-made catastrophes. Nurses, doctors, and rescue personnel must be ready to treat critically ill and injured patients as quickly as possible, whether they are at the site of a bombing, tsunami, or train wreck.

The Dorothy Ebersbach Academic Center for Flight Nursing conducts its annual Flight Camp, a weeklong hands-on interdisciplinary training opportunity which incorporates disaster preparedness and responses to these life-threatening situations through didactic lectures, surgical skill stations, human simulation, and real-time air-medical practice strategies.

Topics range from helicopter safety and transporting infectious disease patients, to landing zone preparation and working in wilderness and remote areas, to securing and decontaminating disaster sites and treating victims.

This continuing education program for advance practice nurses, graduate nursing students, flight and transport nurses, emergency medical technicians, and others culminates with an all-day disaster drill. Participants treat up to 75 would-be victims suffering from massive blood loss, internal injuries, fractures, as well as various other complex medical emergencies amid a site that mimics the chaos of a plane crash, chemical spill, or other kind of unstructured environment.

For more information:

The Dorothy Ebersbach Academic Center for Flight Nursing

The Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing Case Western Reserve University 10900 Euclid Avenue Cleveland, Ohio 44106

Email: admissionsfpb@case.edu

Web: flightnurse.case.edu

Phone: 216.368.2529