Day 162: Casualty

My medics have barely been here for a week and they are already trauma veterans. It all happened very fast...I was trying to teach one of my medics how to use cryotherapy to treat some hand warts when my senior medic ran into the clinic telling me that several Afghan soldiers were hit by a roadside bomb and the ANA clinic was requesting our assistance. So in a matter of minutes we went from hand warts to battlefield trauma!

The medics did a great job mentoring our Afghan clinic medical staff in taking care of their injured soldier who had almost 50 shrapnel wounds as well as a broken left humerus (upper arm). What I wanted to teach my medics was that, as American "advisors", we are here to guide and mentor, not to do their job for them even though we want so bad to show them "American medicine".


We eventually eased our way into assisting with the care of the soldier. After fishing out some pieces of shrapnel from his back, we prepped him for transfer to a nearby trauma hospital for a surgical evaluation. Fortunately, the soldier is recovering well.

After the trauma care was completed, I gathered all the medical staff, US and Afghan, and we discussed the things that went well and the things that could have been done better. We in the military refer to this as a "debrief" or an "after action report", the Afghans saw it as an encroachment into their tea time. Nonetheless, I think the Afghans did admit that some tweaking needed to be done in certain areas. In the world of Afghan mentoring...admitting to the need for change is a huge step in the right direction!