After three decades of experience with the area’s premier cycling race, Cunningham knows to expect a certain number of bumps, bruises, sprains and an occasional broken bone, and he wants to give the hospital and its staff time to prepare.
Throughout its 30-year history, the Tour de Moore has had a special bond with — and need for — Moore Regional Hospital, but that bond was forged even stronger this year with the event’s re-christening as the FirstHealth Tour de Moore.
“FirstHealth is excited to sponsor the Tour de Moore at Springfest this year,” says Charles T. Frock, CEO of FirstHealth of the Carolinas. “This is FirstHealth’s first venture into the world of professional sports sponsorship, and we feel it goes hand in hand with our obligation to promote a healthy lifestyle in the Sandhills community. We hope that everyone will take the opportunity to attend Springfest to watch these fine athletes as they compete in the FirstHealth Tour de Moore.”
“We are very pleased to be working with FirstHealth this year since FirstHealth promotes a lifelong healthy lifestyle,” Cunningham says. “Cycling is a lifelong sport, and FirstHealth supports lifelong exercise.”
Fifteen years ago this month, Cunningham learned just how necessary Moore Regional Hospital could be for an event that annually brings a couple of hundred national and international cyclists to the area. On April 27, 1991, a car cresting a hill on NC 24-27 east of Carthage plowed into a pack of riders and turned what should have been a pleasant spring morning into a time of near tragedy.
Vivian Harrington, now vice president of FirstHealth Corporate Communications, recalls the day vividly. She was attending an off-campus hospital retreat when “beepers started going off all over the place.” The meeting room emptied rapidly, Harrington recalls, as physicians and administrators scrambled for their cars and headed for the hospital.
Dotty Kuell, the hospital’s assistant director for the Emergency Department, remembers the day well, too. She had just begun a two-day weekend shift when calls started coming in from the rescue squads throughout the race area.
“We were told that a car had run into a pack of bikers and we could expect multiple injuries,” she says.
The hospital put its disaster plan into effect for the first time in many years as, within minutes, a quiet Emergency Department on an otherwise uneventful Saturday was transposed into scene reminiscent of the best of “ER.” Fortunately, the hospital’s staff was prepared.
“We always knew when Tour de Moore was happening,” Kuell says, “so we were always staffed with a few extra people. We were always ready, but we never thought we’d be needed.”
As luck would have it, various hospital-affiliated personnel were immediately launched into unexpected caregiving roles.
Clifford Long, M.D., a Tour de Moore participant himself, came upon the injured cyclists just after the accident occurred. Both Kuell and Cunningham recall that Long, an obstetrician/gynecologist, jumped off his bike and began assessing the injured on the road at the accident site.
Max Muse, an Emergency Department R.N. and a rescue squad member, helped transport patients; and Noel McDevitt, M.D., a plastic surgeon, showed up in the Emergency Department in the midst of the emergency and offered his services.
As charge nurse for the day, registered nurse Nancy Hilliard should have been assessing patients for treatment.
Instead she found herself tied up in a treatment room with the most seriously injured while Kuell assumed her role as triage nurse.
On that memorable day, the hospital treated 18 cyclists with injuries ranging from cuts and abrasions to multiple fractures requiring surgeries. The pace was frenetic, but manageable, according to Kuell.
“Once we started rolling, we just got through it,” she says. “There were a lot of very minor things, and they could be treated very easily.”
Although memories of that long-ago Tour de Moore are still vivid in the minds of physicians and nurses who worked the incident, every day in the Emergency Department dawns with the potential of another and even more significant incident, says Kuell.
“We have to be prepared for that every day,” she says. “It isn’t just the Tour de Moore. You can always have that many people come in on any given day who need triage and the disaster mode. I equate the ED with the Fire Department. We always have to be ready for the ‘what if.’”
Cunningham couldn’t agree more.
“We’re glad the FirstHealth is right around the corner,” he says. “Accidents will happen.”
Brenda Bouser works for FirstHealth Corporate Communications.
