Featuring -- Banner Churchill Emergency Room

by Susan Weikel -- Are you looking for a comfortable, quiet room to take a break? With the remodel of Banner’s ER facility in Fallon, one might be tempted to think this was just the spot. The rooms are all new, clean, organized, and very private, each with their own computer and TV, and each set up the same. Dr. Aikin is the Chief Medical Officer for both Banner Lassen and Banner Fallon and he said, “I can walk into any room and grab the cart and I know exactly what is in the 3^rd drawer, the 6^th drawer, they’re all the same.” There is a total of 16 individual rooms, and two “quick look” rooms. During the time period when concerns over Ebola hit the country, plans were drawn to include a reverse isolation room which is vented to the outside, and the room has its own bathroom. With an increase in mental health issues over the past years, the ER area has two rooms with garage like doors that when pulled down, cover all the medical gases and gauges, making the room safer without restricting the patient until they can be moved to definitive (specialty) care. Local artists’ works are displayed throughout the facility giving the rooms a connection to the community. The atmosphere is far from that cold, sterile setting that may come to mind when hearing the word ‘ER’. The nurses’ station is situated so that the computers face out and the staff can observe the rooms while charting and working on paperwork. The trauma and resuscitation rooms offer some of the latest technologies in medicine. “This is my favorite place,” said Aikin. “Everything is in here is very organized because we have absolutely every tool that I would need, including my favorite, a brand-new ultrasound. I love the ultrasound because you can see so much.” The room is also equipped with what Dr. Aikin calls “an eye in the sky,” so if a doctor needs further help or is by themselves, they can active the camera and connect to a trauma doctor or an ER doctor from another Banner facility. The remote doctor can see all the lab work, move the camera, see everything that the on-scene doctor sees, and offer support as needed. All staff is board certified in emergency medicine. Physician coverage is 24/7 (about ten doctors rotate through the shifts), a mid-level provider (Nurse Practitioner or a Physician’s Assistant) from 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. ER occupancy rates tend to run in a consistent pattern across the country. Most ER’s start to ramp up about 9 AM and go up until about 2 or 3 PM, then it falls a bit, with the evening rush starting about 5:00 p.m. and going until about 11:00 p.m. The number of patients seen daily seems to be somewhat seasonally dependent. The average for Fallon is about 60 patients a day. Though Dr. Akin, who has worked for Banner for 14 years, lives in Lake Tahoe, he said, “I came out here and I just love it. I worked in Reno for years and I just love this place. It’s fun. You do stuff out here that you wouldn’t normally do. In a bigger facility you have so much help, that you do less. So, if a person comes in with a chest pain, a cartologist drops out of the ceiling. They don’t drop out of the ceiling here. You do more here. We all like it for the same reason, serving people.”       Never miss a meeting or community event – keep an eye on the community calendar at https://www.thefallonpost.org/events/ If you like what we’re doing, please support our effort to provide local, independent news and contribute to The Fallon Post, your online news source for all things Fallon.