CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The new Charleston-based HealthNet Aeromedical Director says she’s been working in her dream job for the past six months she’s been here and has learned a lot about the medical needs of the area.
Amanda Humphries started in the leadership position within HealthNet’s critical care unit back in November of last year coming from Houston, Texas where she served as an EMS medical director, an AMR assistant director, as well as an emergency department physician. 
Humphries told MetroNews when she was first starting the job that she would be interacting a lot with the frontline medical crews and training both air and ground transport employees. And six months later, that’s exactly what she’s been doing, among other various tasks.
She said it has been great serving the medical needs of West Virginians so far.
“I hit the ground running, I have been involved in a lot of things since I’ve been here,” Humphries told MetroNews.
Humphries said one of the tasks she got to do right off the bat is something called an annual competency evaluation for all of their medical providers where they perform in simulated patient-care scenarios as a teaching and learning opportunity.
She said it was a good opportunity for her just to learn who all of the providers are.
“I got to go to all of our air and ground bases over my first few months here and meet the crews and work with them firsthand, getting to, you know, put faces with names,” she said.
Humphries said it was also helpful to get to see the environment in which all of the crews practice within as there are a lot of various different circumstances they work in depending on where they’re located in the region. For instance, she said crews at Base 5 in Beckley interact a lot with people who are rafting in the New River Gorge area.
Humphries said another project she’s been working on during her time here so far has been centered around increasing the scope of practice for what air medical providers are able to do, and she said they will be coming out with a new set of guidelines within the next coming months.
She said she was able to create these new guidelines with the support of the state EMS office.
“I will get the opportunity to introduce new life-saving and life-sustaining procedures that our crews are able to do to take care of people, and that is very very exciting to me,” Humphries said.
She said she has also been working in the emergency department in both Charleston and Morgantown.
Humphries said despite her EMS and AMR experience in Texas among other places, each location will always come with its own unique set of challenges, and learning the unique geography of West Virginia has been eye-opening.
“You know, no matter how much experience you have, each new practice environment, each new place, it brings new distinct challenges and new distinct situations,” she said.
Humphries said with the unique terrain of the area, a major focus she wants to work on expanding during her time here in the Mountain State is prolonging patient-care protocols.
She said in more urban areas, pre-hospital providers take care of patients for short periods of time, while here in a more rural setting, both air and ground pre-hospital providers tend to take care of patients for longer periods of time.
Humphries said she wants to expand that pre-hospital care even further as it gives them a lot of opportunity to make a significant impact on patients.
She said it has been an honor being able to provide such critical care to the patients of West Virginia and meeting them where they are in dire situations.
“What we do, taking care of people in their moments of greatest need is really one of the absolute highest honors that you can have as a fellow human being,” said Humphries.