Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire Air Ambulance doctor shortlisted for national award
A doctor on the Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire Air Ambulance team has been shortlisted for a doctor of the year award.
Dr Mike Hughes, who is blazing a trail for young surgeons through his work at the charity, has been shortlisted for the title in the Air Ambulances UK Awards of Excellence.
He is different to other air ambulance doctors because he comes from a surgical background, something that isn’t often seen in the helicopter emergency medical service — populated with doctors from anaesthesia and emergency medicine.
But his set of skills brought a different perspective to the work of the crews on board the helicopter since he joined the air ambulance team in February 2022.
The charity's deputy medical director, Doctor Adam Chesters said: Almost immediately after being signed off in the service, Mike attended a series of difficult cases, treating some of the sickest patients attended by the service in this time. Using his surgical expertise, he was able to help deliver the very highest quality of care to the patient.”
He has dealt with 176 incidents, including some of the most challenging shifts over the summer, and being a surgeon rather than an anaesthetist has meant he has carried out some medical interventions using a skill set that the other doctors do not have.
The incidents included 36 road traffic incidents, 23 cardiac arrests and 19 incidents of self-harm.
When he attended a patient who had been stabbed in the neck, rather than apply direct pressure to the bleeding wound, Mike had the skills to be able to dissect down and tie off the bleeding vessels using forceps before transferring the patient to the nearest major trauma centre with the forceps in situ.
The technique is a better way of stopping the bleeding, but is in the skillset of very few doctors across the air ambulance community.
Mike also recently passed the Fellowship of the College of Royal Surgeons examination in major trauma surgery and was the the first person to ever sit the exam and so the first to pass it — despite a busy six months with the air ambulance and the birth of his third child.
The annual awards celebrate and recognise the specialist lifesaving skills and commitment of those working tirelessly within and in support of the air ambulance community across the UK.
The awards ceremony will be held at Edgbaston Stadium, Birmingham, on November 14 — where crew members will be willing Mike to scoop the Doctor of the Year award.
