It’s been a solid 12 years since Robbie Tester, then a clinician, took on his last mission with Erlanger Life Force. But the memories of those flights are still fresh in his mind.
“One time we flew into Georgia,” he recalls. “A kid had been hurt on an ATV. He needed a chest tube and several other measures to stabilize. It was something small, rural hospitals don’t see that often.
“We brought him back (here), and he made a full recovery, but he probably wouldn’t have survived a two-hour (ground) ambulance ride.”
Tester flew on Life Force from 1998 to 2012 before moving into an administrative role. As Erlanger’s vice president for patient logistics, he was at the heart of the celebration when Life Force celebrated its 35th anniversary last December.
“The program went into service Dec. 17, 1988,” he says, “and we flew our first patient on the 19th — a pediatric patient in Sewanee with a respiratory problem.”