Critical Care Transport Course Instructors

 

Marlon Ansaldo, RN, is a flight nurse with the Pediatric Critical Care Transport Team at Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital. He was born in the Philippines but his parents’ work at the World Health Organization soon brought him and his siblings to the Solomon Islands. In 1990, he moved to Indiana and later completed his nursing degree at the University of Indiana. By 2005, he had moved to Connecticut and was working in the emergency department. He has been on the pediatric critical care transport team since 2017.

 

Nick Cochran-Caggiano, MD, MS is an EMS medical director at Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine. He worked for seven years as an EMT prior to medical school, and remains focused on prehospital care as a physician, recently completing an EMS fellowship through Yale University School of Medicine. His clinical interests include prehospital pediatric care, out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, Haz-Mat and advanced airway management.

 

Staley Dietrich, RN, EMT-P (Course Coordinator) is a critical care transport nurse for University Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, and also works in the emergency department at Staten Island University Hospital. Before heading to the Garden State, he was a pediatric flight nurse with Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital and critical care transport paramedic for Northwell Health. He has a master’s degree in education from Brooklyn College. Staley also completed his paramedic training in Brooklyn and spent more than a decade in NYC-EMS.

 

Ashley DiStadio, RN, MSN is the nurse educator for Yale New Haven Hospital’s Neuroscience ICU. She has been caring for neurocritical and neurosurgical patients since becoming a nurse, and found her true calling at Yale - the hospital is a comprehensive stroke center and has also achieved the highest level of accreditation in epilepsy care. She is a Certified Neuroscience Registered Nurse (CNRN) and holds a master’s degree in nursing leadership.

 

Daniel Ebbs, DO, MS, FAAP, EMT-P, is a pediatric critical care attending physician at Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital. When not in the PICU, he supervises the Pediatric Pandemic Network, works with the Institute for Global Health and Yale Uganda, and is the assistant director for the Yale Pediatric Global Health Track. He co-founded MGY, which trains community health workers around the world, and the Laro Kwo (“Saving Lives”) Project in Northern Uganda. Dr. Ebbs maintains his paramedic certification to this day, and spent over 25 years as a ground and flight paramedic.

Christine Fontana, APRN, MSN, has been a neonatal nurse practitioner since 1989. She practices in the neonatal intensive care unit at Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital and is also the director of the hospital’s neonatal transport team. The team cares for infants throughout the region, not only transporting them safely but providing advanced care, including high frequency oscillatory ventilation and therapeutic hypothermia, on the way.

 

Brian Hornby, APRN, MSN, is a nurse practitioner hospitalist and part of the rapid response team at Bridgeport Hospital. He earned his degree from Southern Connecticut State University. Many years spent as a nurse in a busy New York City emergency department, followed by four years as a flight nurse with Yale New Haven Health, allows him to bring quick, sound decision-making to the bedside during an in-hospital rapid response.

 

Julie Leviter, MD, is an attending physician at Yale-New Haven Children's Hospital and an assistant professor of clinical pediatrics at Yale University School of Medicine. Additionally, she is a medical control physician for the children's hospital critical care transport team. Her research and clinical interests include point-of-care ultrasonography and education for doctors, medical students, paramedics, and nurses.

 

In addition to being a staff perfusionist, Kevin Tae, MS, CCP, teaches physicians, nurses, and others about using ECMO. He also chairs the Yale New Haven Hospital ECMO Committee. Kevin graduated with a physics degree from Case Western Reserve University and completed his perfusionist training at Cleveland Clinic. He continues to be amazed at how well so many patients recover from ECMO therapy, and at his team’s ability to perform ECMO rescues — by air and ground — at community hospitals.