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KEARNEY - Emily Bergstrom, an AirCare flight nurse at Good Samaritan Hospital, has figured out exactly what works best for her and her sensitive stomach when on a flight.

"I've got the sensitive stomach of the group," she said, laughing with fellow flight nurses Amy Softley and Cheryl Hunt. "I just learned what works for me."

Bergstrom has to be sitting facing forward, have air vents pointed at her and have sunglasses that wrap around on the side.

Laughing with Hunt, Bergstrom said Hunt will be sipping coffee in 100-degree heat and Bergstrom will have all the air vents pointed at her on a flight.

"There's been times when I've been so sick I wonder, 'Why do I do this job?' but I keep gettin' back in," Bergstrom said.

In a small room overlooking the helicopter pad at Good Samaritan Hospital, Hunt, Softley and Bergstrom, three of 14 AirCare flight nurses, gathered to share their combined 17 years experience as flight nurses while visitors and patients filtered into the room to get an up-close look at the helicopter.

"The day I get tired of watching that helicopter come and go, I'll quit," Bergstrom said as a visitor looked curiously out the window at the helicopter.

Softley, who dispatched for the helicopter in college, always wondered what other small hospitals looked like when she would talk to them over the phone.

"There's an awe of it (the helicopter)," she said.

Softley worked in the intensive care unit in Lincoln before working in the emergency room at Good Samaritan Hospital. She has been a flight nurse for two and a half years.

Hunt said she was at the other end of the helicopter watching it come and go while working in trauma before becoming a flight nurse 8½ years ago.

"It was an awesome sight," she said of the helicopter. "It was very neat."

Hunt, whose background is in emergency and intensive care, considers herself a bit of a trauma junkie.

Bergstrom also claims to be an adrenaline junkie who likes the unknown factor of her job.

"There's the whole flying factor," she said, noting she worked in the intensive care unit in the hospital before becoming a flight nurse about six years ago.

After years of experience, Hunt, Berstrom and Softley still remember their first flights.

For Hunt, it was a cardiac patient.

"To see him before and after all that … that's a neat feeling."

Bergstrom's first flight was a scene flight to an accident in Kansas where a chest tube was planted in the patient in the middle of a field.

"It was amazing," she said, remembering her first flight was also very overwhelming. "A person would be stupid not to feel that overwhelming."

And for Softley, a part-time flyer and part-time trauma prevention, it was picking up a patient from a smaller hospital after a drunk driving accident.

"I think this job (as a flight nurse) helps me with my other job … I've seen them and I've picked them up and hugged their families."

She recalled flying the whole weekend her first weekend on the job.

"I didn't sleep all weekend," she said.

Hunt said the 'typical' schedule for the nurses is a mixture of 24 and 12 hours shifts. Bergstrom said they are never guaranteed to get off or start working at a certain time because of the unexpected.

"We learn not to schedule plans," Hunt laughed.

"We've learned that the hard way," Bergstrom added.

After getting a call, the nurses agree they try to get a game plan together while they are in flight with what steps to take when they land.

"We talk a lot. We brainstorm all the what ifs and the worst possible," Bergstrom said. "Usually the game plan is altered somewhere or another."

Hunt said they walk through treatment procedures and have to be ready for any kind of patient from newborns to the elderly.

"It's a little bit of everything," she said.

Hunt said the best part of being a flight nurses is the closeness with her colleagues.

"What we do and what we see. We are brothers and sisters. If something bad happens, the hugs, the tears … support each other on the bad outcomes."

"Even though you're under an extreme amount of stress, you're not alone," Berstrom added, noting each flight flies with two nurses. "You're going to get through it."

Softley said she enjoys helping the patients and taking them to a facility that will care for them to give the family some ease.

The nurses agreed the worst part of the job is the sad outcomes and for Softley, it's the pediatric patients who are especially difficult.

"It's one of those that it's not fair," she said. As a mom herself, she said it is difficult putting herself in other moms' shoes. "I can take care of your child, but I can't imagine being you."

"And then sit down and cry with them," Hunt chimed in.

"It's the pediatric patients you just want to pick up and hold," Bergstrom said.

Softley said the pediatric patients do OK riding in the helicopter, sometimes even sleeping in their car seats while the nurses are biting their nails.

Hunt said it is difficult not being able to know the outcomes of some of the patients they have flown. On the other hand, patients have recognized the nurses and still remember them from the flight.

A patient approached Bergstrom in a theater and told her that she had flown him.

"It was awesome to see him," she said.

"I know you would be OK, but it's just great to see that," Softley said about seeing patients outside the helicopter.

The nurses even receive birthday pictures of a particular patient they flew.

Bergstrom said they are lucky to have good pilots who know all the nurses by name.

"We're all a big family," she said.

"It's a great job," Hunt said. "I can't imagine not doing it … they'll have to take us out in wheelchairs we want to do it that long."

e-mail to:

sarah.mulder@kearneyhub.com