VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) – Virginia Beach medics have new lifesaving tools to help patients.  Virginia Beach EMS is now utilizing field ultrasounds, which ensures efficiency in critical incidents such as a car accident. “This does save time because if we can identify, for instance, in a trauma patient that they have internal bleeding, that can expedite their care through the emergency department and into surgery if they need it immediately or into the CAT scanner to be able to obtain more precise images,” said Dr. Stewart Martin, Virginia Beach EMS medical director.  The ultrasound is glided across the patient’s abdomen, and the medic can view everything on a portable tablet.  “Ultrasound is another great advance that we're bringing to the community, and I think it's a great benefit,” said Dr. Martin.  Dr. Martin mentioned that one of the advantages of ultrasounds is seeing if there is internal bleeding, if your heart is pumping effectively or if a lung has collapsed, all while in the back of an ambulance.  “A patient with cardiac arrest that we might be treating, we can see if the treatment that we're doing is effective. And if it isn't, then maybe we need to change what we're doing to try to get a better response from the patient,” said Dr. Martin.  Currently, there are only three ultrasounds in Virginia Beach. The hope is to expand the program to help as many patients as possible.  “I think the first step is to expand it to more of our personnel that are trained,” said Dr. Martin. “So, we're going to be looking into having additional classes to be able to train more of our personnel.”  Virginia Beach EMS is not the only emergency service in Hampton Roads that uses the ultrasounds. Chesapeake also has multiple ultrasounds to help people in critical situations.