By Steve Keating
PHOENIX (Reuters) – Damar Hamlin put NFL medical staff in the spotlight but while they are ready to spring into action during Sunday’s Super Bowl to deal with anything from cardiac arrest to delivering a baby they would much prefer to stay on the sidelines.
Emergency medical staff working NFL games operate largely unnoticed until called upon as they were on Jan. 2 when Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest making a tackle.
The Buffalo Bills safety had to have his heart restarted on the field in front of a full stadium and millions of television viewers.
The audience for Sunday’s clash between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles will be a global one and the NFL’s celebrated emergency staff would prefer not to be part of the action.
“Most emergency physicians, just by their training and demeanour, tend to not seek the limelight,” NFL Emergency Preparedness consultant Dr. Jim Ellis told Reuters during a tour of Glendale stadium’s medical facilities on Thursday.
“They are not your ‘Doc Hollywoods’ that are out there in front of the camera, they just want to do their job and do it for all the right reasons.
“Do I worry about things? Of course I do.
“I come to every game thinking worse case scenario but I’m confident we have the people on the field to manage those worse case scenarios.”
For the NFL’s medical team there can be no fumbles.
Ellis said they would rely on the same Emergency Action Plan (EAP) that likely saved Hamlin’s life for any medical crisis on Sunday.
“That plan was followed to a ‘T’ a few weeks ago with the Hamlin situation and that was the reason there was a great outcome,” said Ellis. “We had a plan and followed the plan.
“That’s what saved him, you had incredibly well trained people that basically did their job.
“It’s heroic but they did their job because they do this all the time.”
That plan includes 30 emergency medical personnel deployed at every NFL game, with only a slight increase of three or four more for the Super Bowl. Most of the team will be pulled from the local emergency community, including airway technicians.
There will be dozens of ambulances on site including two dedicated for players, who can be transported to St. Joseph’s Medical Centre, the designated level one trauma centre for Sunday’s game, which is eight-to-nine minutes from the stadium.
“In a crisis you don’t rise to some level, you will fall to the level of your preparation, so we want to be as prepared as we can be,” said Dr. Allen Sills , the NFL Chief Medical Officer.
“We prepare for it and plan for it, just like we do every single game and really every week and every game is our Super Bowl.”
Sills said the Super Bowl will have the facilities in place to allow doctors to provide the care found in a hospital.
Kylie Kelce, wife of Eagles Pro-Bowl centre Jason, is 38 weeks pregnant but plans to be at the game to watch her husband.
The NFL medical team is standing by, just in case.
“I have delivered 54 in my career, not any recently, we would have everything that we would need to support them if that would happen,” assured Ellis.
(Reporting by Steve Keating in Phoenix; Editing by Peter Rutherford)
