Robert Miller’s dream of being a flight nurse in his hometown of Columbus came true Monday morning.
Well, at least half of that dream, at any rate.
Miller, 35, officially began his career as a flight nurse, a goal years in the making, on Monday, not in Columbus but in the small town of Grants, New Mexico, located about 80 miles west of Albuquerque.
“Columbus is my home and it’s always going to be my home,” Miller said. “My goal is to get back to Columbus, hopefully in about a year.”
To achieve that goal, Miller signed on with PHI Aviation, which provides helicopter services to the oil industry and medical transport across the U.S. and internationally. Although PHI has three bases in Mississippi, including one located at the District 3 fire station in New Hope, the only available opening for Miller was in New Mexico.
Miller’s wife, Jeanie, is a therapist at Trinity Place. The couple’s only child, Kate Ross, is a second-grader at Annunciation Catholic School. Even so, his new job won’t mean being entirely separated from his family.
“We work two-week shifts, so I’ll come home for two weeks and be away for two weeks,” Miller said. “It’s not the ideal situation, but we’ll work it out.”
Miller said his interest in a medical career began when he was a student at Columbus High School, but it took some time for exactly what he wanted to do to come into focus.
“I ended up at Mississippi State, studying sports medicine,” he said. “I was an athletic trainer at Mississippi State, but I realized that I wasn’t really drawn toward therapy, so I decided to go with the nursing route.”
After graduating from MSU, Miller entered the nursing school program at East Mississippi Community College, earning his nursing degree in 2013.
Even then, the path to his preferred position wasn’t linear.
“When I was in nursing school, I always knew emergency medicine is where I wanted to be,” Miller said. “But for whatever reasons, my instructors would never put me in an ER situation. They kept saying, ‘You need to try other things to make sure this is what you want. Look at other options, just to see.’”
Miller began his career as an ICU nurse at Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle.
“I did that for a couple of years, then dabbled in home health care for a little while,” he said. “Then I went to (OCH Regional Medical Center) and worked in the emergency room for about 3 1/2 years until COVID hit.”
The pandemic put an enormous strain on hospital staffing which made the demand for travel nurses extremely high.
“That opened up an opportunity for me to work as a travel nurse, but all the time it was in the back of my mind to be a flight nurse,” Miller said. “The top 1 percent of nurses are your flight nurses. It’s hard to get into and extremely competitive.”
Miller said flight nursing appeals to him because of the nature of the job.
“You’re dealing with very serious injuries and medical emergencies — head trauma, multi-system trauma, accidents, car wrecks where time is critical,” Miller said. “A lot of it is rural access. If an EMT gets called deep in Noxubee County, you’re 45 minutes from a hospital. With a helicopter, the time … is cut in half. That can be the difference between life and death.”
Miller said flight nursing goes beyond nursing skills.
“They want self-starters, people who are good with people, people who are cool under pressure,” he said. “These are high-pressure situations every time out even if it’s just transporting a patient from one hospital to another. You’re taking very sick people to another hospital because the hospital they are leaving can’t give them the care they need. To me, I can’t think of any better kind of work.”
Especially if the path leads back to Columbus.
“That’s my goal now,” he said. “Learn, get experience and come back home.”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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