ROTC cadet gives life-saving effort while on int’l flight
Jerrod Fedorchik, a 20-year-old cadet in the U.S. Army ROTC program, was 20 minutes from Amsterdam when a call went out that someone with medical training was needed in the back of the plane.
Jerrod Fedorchik is a 20-year-old cadet in the U.S. Army ROTC program.
Fedorchik, who will be a junior this fall, had the training and offered his services.
He found a 19-year-old female Kuwaiti national unconscious in the bathroom. “Within about two minutes, she was starting to come back to consciousness. I leaned her against the wall and did her assessments. Her blood pressure was 90 over 60 and she was a small woman—100 pounds dripping wet. That’s dangerously low blood pressure.
“I asked the stewardess if they had an IV. The airplane had an IV bag and start kit. I started that, got her on oxygen and put a blanket on her to get her warmed up.
“By then, we had landed and the ground crew took over. I helped the ground crew with assessment and helped them start an electrocardiogram of the heart. When ground crew did its assessment, her blood pressure was 126 over 80. Within that 20-minute time frame, she got a lot a better. I can pretty confidently say she was fine,†he said.
EMT by age 18
Fedorchik has been trained as an emergency medical technician since taking an online class through Western Nebraska Community College during his senior year at Bridgeport High School in 2016. He started riding with the Bridgeport ambulance crew in August 2016—just as he was entering his senior year—and became certified in IV administration in January 2017.
He enrolled at State in August 2017 and joined the Aurora Fire Department as an emergency medical technician in November 2017. This summer, he was hired part time as an EMT for Brookings Health System and also is an assistant instructor for the EMT class taught at State.
Since his freshman year he has been involved in chemistry research, has been serving on the Aurora Fire Department and has been on a national ROTC scholarship.
It was his involvement in ROTC that had Fedorchik on that June 29 flight. He and fellow SDSU student Laura Selman, of Colman, were selected to participate in the Cadet Coalition Warfighter Program, a highly selective program in which cadets learn the culture of another country to understand the lifestyle of those who live there and work alongside that country’s military.
