Heroes Among Us: How Medical Pros at a Colorado Hospital Saved Lives After Mass Shooting at Club Q

Editor's Note: At Pulsara, it's our honor to highlight the stories of our customers and the work they do on behalf of their patients. On November 20th, the UCHealth Memorial Hospital Central team responded courageously to a mass shooting in Colorado Springs. The following article is an excerpt from their story, which was written by Erin Emery, Content Director at UCHealth, and Katie Kerwin McCrimmon, Writer and Communications Specialist at UCHealth. It was originally published on November 27th, 2022, on uchealth.org. Read the full story here. 

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The calls crackled over the police officer’s radio in the hospital ER: “Club Q … Active shooter …”

It was a little after midnight. Saturday night had been unusually quiet in the ER. But the early hours of Sunday, Nov. 20, were about to test medical pros who train to handle the worst possible emergencies.

Patients in dire need of their help were minutes away.

The police officer had been in the emergency department at UCHealth Memorial Hospital Central in Colorado Springs assisting with a suspected drunk driver when he heard the call about a horrific mass shooting. He immediately gave a heads up to the charge nurse.

She jumped into action, notifying her team throughout the emergency department (or ED as medical folks call it) along with other key people throughout the hospital.

“One of the police officers just told us that there was a shooting and we’re expecting anywhere from 15 to 20 people. We’re hoping it’s wrong, but if not, it’s all hands on deck,” the charge nurse told Kayla Ireland, who was working that night as Memorial Hospital’s nursing house supervisor.

“OK. I’m headed down there,” said Ireland, who had been working upstairs in the hospital.

Until news of the shooting hit, the emergency staff and providers mostly had been helping people who were sick with the flu, RSV and COVID-19. But Memorial is a Level I Trauma Center, the highest level possible. That means that highly trained teams must be ready 24/7 for emergencies of all sorts — including a mass shooting.

The hospital is just 12 minutes and a little over five miles away from Club Q, which had always been a refuge for LGBTQ people. Now club goers who had been enjoying a fun Saturday night were fighting for their lives.

Dr. Katy Picard is an emergency medicine specialist. She was one of two on duty at UCHealth’s Level I Trauma Center at Memorial Hospital Central when the Club Q shooting happened. She and fellow hospital workers saved multiple survivors. Photo by Mark Reis, for UCHealth.

‘Don’t let me die’

About 10 minutes after the ED crew first heard about the mass shooting, live updates started arriving from paramedics and EMTs aboard American Medical Response ambulances. They confirmed everyone’s worst fears.

“GSW. Two minutes out,” an emergency responder said over a radio while en route to the hospital.

GSW stands for “gunshot wound.”

The same call kept repeating again and again. More patients were coming one after another after another. Each time, the description was the same.

“GSW. Multiple GSWs. Back, thigh, shoulder, arm,” the voice on the radio said.

Staccato status reports kept pinging over the radio: “Two minutes out. Five minutes out.”

Inside the hospital, the team raced to get ready.

“We just started emptying out rooms and moving people,” said Ireland, the nursing house supervisor. “We were trying to get rooms clean and get ready for that huge influx of patients.’’

As the patients arrived, the charge nurse, told emergency responders where to take each person.

“We got them all in back-to-back,” Ireland said.

“There was a lot of moaning and screaming and people saying, ‘Help me. Help me,’” Ireland recalled. “One person was screaming, ‘Don’t let me die.’”

A few minutes earlier, Dupey had used an app called Pulsara to instantly send a message both internally and externally to emergency medicine experts, trauma doctors, surgeons, orthopedic surgeons, radiologists, nurses, respiratory therapists, pharmacists, EMS workers and CT technicians.

All had rehearsed their roles. Every month, they hold drills to practice responding to trauma. This time, they were dealing with the real thing.

CONTINUE READING THE FULL ARTICLE HERE 

About the Authors 

Erin Emery is editor of UCHealth Today, a hub for medical news, inspiring patient stories and tips for healthy living. Erin spent years as a reporter for The Denver Post, Colorado Springs Gazette and Colorado Springs Sun. She was part of a team of Denver Post reporters who won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news reporting. Erin joined UCHealth in 2008, and she is awed by the strength of patients and their stories.

Katie Kerwin McCrimmon is a proud Colorado native. She attended Colorado College, thanks to a merit scholarship from the Boettcher Foundation, and worked as a park ranger in Rocky Mountain National Park during summer breaks from college. She is also a storyteller. She loves getting to know UCHealth patients and providers and sharing their inspiring stories. Katie spent years working as a journalist at the Rocky Mountain News and was a finalist with a team of reporters for the Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of a deadly wildfire in Glenwood Springs in 1994. Katie was the first reporter in the U.S. to track down and interview survivors of the tragic blaze, which left 14 firefighters dead. She covered an array of beats over the years, including the environment, politics, education and criminal justice. She also loved covering stories in Congress and at the U.S. Supreme Court during a stint as the Rocky’s reporter in Washington, D.C. Katie then worked as a reporter for an online health news site before joining the UCHealth team in 2017. Katie and her husband Cyrus, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer, have three children.