Day 228: Practice

As the "doc" I'm tasked with finding creative ways to train our troops in the art of combat medicine and first aid. Funny thing is...I'm no expert myself! Lucky for me, I have a team of medics, all with different experiences, to help me put the training evolution together. We brainstormed the course outline, and our goals for the students (16 total). Because we only had 1-2 hours available per day, we had to spread the course out over 4 days. Here was the break down of our class.

Day #1 - Combat Lifesaver Bag - What's in It?, Principles of Managing an Airway, Triage, Catastrophic Bleeding - Tourniquets

Day #2 - Chest Trauma - Managing a Tension Pneumothorax, Primary/Secondary Assessments, How to Call a MEDEVAC


Day #3 - IV Training and Litter Training - A change of pace from the death-by-powerpoint portion of our training workshop. Primarily a hands-on day. (see the poking above!)

Day #4 - What we call the "Capstone" event of our training workshop. The medics and I planned a "real" mass casualty scenario to familiarize our students with what a multi-trauma emergency can feel like on Camp Clark...here's the scenario...

We have a convoy which just left Camp Clark when an IED exploded just as they left the gate. 1 vehicle was directly hit, and the driver was still able to turn the truck around and come back to base. Apparently, everyone in the vehicle is severely wounded. The truck is now arriving...


The team is on standby as the truck roles in. We have 3 victims - the driver, gunner, and front passenger, all severely injured. The picture above is one of our "victims" with a severe neck wound. One of the students as well as my interpreter, Latif are assessing his "injuries" and transferring him over to a litter (what we in the civilian world would call a stretcher). The primary treatment area is the Troop Medical Clinic (TMC)...


...we pulled the 3 victims from the vehicle, and they have been carried over to the TMC by litter. We have one with a severe neck wound, another with a chest wound, and the other with severe wounds to his R arm/leg. Tourniquets were placed prior to arriving at the TMC.

While in the TMC, the "victims" are being assessed. All were given large bore IVs, chest wounds were treated, airway maneuvers were performed, and a Medevac was called over the radio. The bird is going to land in less than 15 minutes, we need to hurry and get the patients loaded for transport.


As you can see, we could only fit 2 of the 3 victims in our ambulance so the team was able to improvise in order to get the third patient transported successfully (see pic below).


There's our third "victim", strapped onto a litter and placed right on top of the hood. I thought that was an excellent method for transport.


The team did an excellent job from start to finish, from getting the patients out of the vehicles all the way to transporting the patients by ambulance to the helicopter landing zone. A job well done! If anything happens to us on Camp Clark...we'll be ready. Class dismissed!!