TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- “You don’t know what you’re going to get … whether it’s ‘go there now because it’s an urgent sort of thing or can this wait until tomorrow’ - you just don’t know,” said Senior Airman Trevor Lee, 60th Medical Support Squadron biomedical equipment technician.
Doing more with less, Airmen from the 60th MDSS provide support to David Grant USAF Medical Center by managing medical deployment kits, patient administration and maintenance on all of the hospital’s equipment.
The Medical Logistics Flight has positions for 30 Airmen, but only have 20 on board - leaving them at a 66% staffing rate.
The Medical Equipment Repair Center is part of the Medical Logistics Flight. Within the flight, technicians are responsible for the installation, training, scheduled inspection, preventative maintenance, calibration and repair of various medical devices used in the course of healthcare delivery.
A unique challenge that Lee has faced during the pandemic has been the treatment of COVID-19 patients and need to solve problems that hindered his ability to provide that treatment.
“One unique call I had was from an anesthesia tech who said one of the (ventilators) weren’t working at all,” he said as a major problem he needed to find the solution to. “It was ventilating the patient, but wasn’t showing any of the different statistics our anesthesiologists need to make sure the patient was breathing properly.”
Sometimes while going into a job, the team goes leaps and bounds to find the solution, but in this case, it was a simple fix.
“With COVID patients, they are using a lot of really thick drugs in the lungs, and these drugs are going into these little flow sensors that are very delicate and clogging up the little wire that measures the flow,” Lee described. “It’s kind of difficult to see when it’s happening that it’s that simple of a problem. It was as simple as replacing a flow sensor.”
Lee was recently recognized as a star performer within the flight and was picked for a special, temporary duty to Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico, to aid their medical group with an overwhelming amount of equipment repair.
“Lee has been an outstanding Airman since his arrival from technical training,” said Master Sgt. Paul Vestal, noncommissioned officer in charge of the contingency equipment maintenance program. “From the beginning, he has always been determined to learn everything he could about the profession and never turned down an opportunity to work on something new. He has become one of our most relied-upon trainers for new Airmen.”
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