World News
Medical transport workers don't take life for granted
Published: September 27, 2006
KANSAS CITY, Kan. (CNS) -- Not many of us can come home from work each day and say we have saved a life. But that would be a slow day for Michael Smith, a parishioner of the Cathedral of St. Peter in Kansas City, who works for an ambulance service based in Lawrence. Smith figures he transports some 150 people a year to hospital emergency rooms all around the region. But don't look for his ambulance on the road anytime soon. Smith is a pilot for a company called Life Star, and his ambulance is a helicopter. Since its founding in 1988, Life Star of Kansas -- operated jointly by St. Francis Hospital and Stormont-Vail Hospital, both in Topeka -- has transported more than 10,000 patients, according to director Greg Hildenbrand. The Catholic values at St. Francis Hospital resonate in a very real way in this highly stressful and challenging medical environment, Hildenbrand said. "This job demands a tremendous degree of caring and compassion," he told The Leaven, newspaper of the Kansas City Archdiocese. "Every patient is having the worst day of his or her life."
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