US Army Medic Training

[Maine_Finn]

The following is a breakdown of the US Army 91W course. Perhaps someone can provide an outline of the CF equivalent.

The first seven to eight weeks consist of classroom training. Soldiers go through the National Registry Emergency Medical Technician-Basic course and take the NREMT-B exam at the end of the eight weeks. Upon completion of the EMT portion of the course, soldiers move on to the Whiskey portion of training and another three to four weeks in the classroom. They begin practicing IV sticks and are given an opportunity to perform a blood draw. They learn airway management, control bleeding, care under fire, tactical field care (also known as TC-3), and a variety of other skills before moving out of the classroom. The remainder of the course is spent outside, learning how to apply tourniquets, start IVs, and apply dressings and bandages in the field setting. Litter and manual carries are taught and practiced and soldiers get to load and unload a field ambulance and a deuce-and-a-half truck with patients on litters.

The next portion of training, called Situational Training Exercises, or STX, soldiers spend two days of clinicals at Brooke Army Medical Center in various wards - including the burn ward and the ICU. Instructors lead soldiers on patrols and MOUT exercises where they take simulated casualties and have to treat and evacuate them "under fire" to casualty collection points where more advanced field care can be given. Soldiers practice writing and calling in nine-line MEDEVAC requests.

The final part of training is the Field Training Exercise, or FTX, which is a week long and conducted at a specialized training site. Every soldier draws an M16A2, which they will carry for the duration of the FTX. Two days are spent at the range, first zeroing and then qualifying on the M16. Soldiers spend the rest of the week going through day-long training stations in MOUT, patrolling, Forward Aid Station, Battalion Aid Station, FOB security, and also get to spend time as simulated casualties. The culminating event at FTX is the litter obstacle course, where teams of four must carry patients on litters over walls, through a trench, over uneven terrain, and under barbed wire through ankle-deep sand.

US Army medics graduate after this sixteen-week course and are sent to regular army units or back home, if they are National Guard or Reserve component. Most will be deployed within six months of graduation.


The course isn't easy but it's worthwhile and I found it fun. The classroom part was the most difficult. I graduated last week. I'm now waiting for the start of M6 - nurse - training.

~Pv2 Finn

*Edited for spelling.

 

[Armymedic]

The tactical combat casualty care course (TC-3) is something that is not taught during our medics QL3. Perhaps this would be a good add on for CF medics seeing how all medics should be trained in an army centric role, and the majority are employed in support of the army.

 

[The Heathen]

I'm assuming that american medics are already trained through basic.

It sounds like a good system for training, especially with the focus on real world patients and tactical care. 

My main complaint with the canadian system, and lets be clear here that I'm a reservist, and have never been overseas, is that the training has just been taken off the civilian shelf and applied to the military market. 

Yes, the basic skills of PCP/EMT whatever you want to call it still apply, but that's not the same situation you'll be in real world.  It's unlikely you'll have a second medic as a partner, and that you will  have an ambulance worth of supplies at your beck and call. 
More likely you are operating out of a medical bag and using whatever you have at hand.

I've read over the american TCCC system, and a lot of it I think makes a lot of sense, espeically when working in the Urban environment. 

The reg force medics trades course goes something like this:  The first part is all textbook/biology, then a large clinical, followed a civilian EMT course.  Then there are a couple days in the field.  Takes about 4 months.

The reserves trades course is similiar, but is 6 weeks, also starting off with textbook anatomy and physiology, followed by a national, below EMT level course called Advanced Medical First Responder II.  It sounds like the USA has a standardized paramedical course between states, but canada does not have a standardized course between provinces (ridiculous I know) so reservists, who don't get the EMT course, have to settle for the AMFRII, which is decent, if simple.  Position of comfort, high flow oxygen, OPA's, etc.

There is  also a field component, 5 days or so I think, followed by a bit of practical experience with IV's.  The course I was on was when IV's weren't part of the system, but they've been put back into the curriculum this year. 

That's called the QL 3, (qualification level), for reserves, RQL3, reserves also get the RQL4, which is 5 weeks of clinical skills and a higher level of training in anatomy and physiology.  Examinations of the X, from head to toe, simple meds, and treatments. 

There's also no an "enhancement course" for reservists to bring us to the reg force level, so people like me can go overseas.  It is 3 weeks long.  So total of 12 weeks of training for reservists.  Reg force is 3 months. 

That's enough for now.

I should probably get back to work.   

With luck RN PRN jumps on this question.

 

[Loachman]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061124/ap_on_he_me/combat_medics_training

New training readies medics for battle

By WILLIAM KATES, Associated Press Writer
Fri Nov 24, 2:48 PM ET

FORT DRUM, N.Y. - Their vision obscured by thick smoke in the semidarkness, heads rattling with the deafening booms of nearby explosions and lungs choked by the paralyzing stench of burning diesel fuel, two Army medics work fast to stabilize the wounded patient for evacuation.

Every move is being watched and recorded by operators in the control room at the Medical Simulation Training Center at Fort Drum, one of 18 new training facilities being built worldwide to improve the Army's combat medic training.

"You smell burning hair. You smell the diesel fuel," said Spc. Robert Trimble, one of the medics in the drill. "You hear the sounds of battle all around you. Without bullets flying over your head, this is about as real as it can get."

The new facility at Fort Drum is the first Medical Simulation Training Center designed specifically for that purpose and built from the ground up, said Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, who helped open the new center last month.

Trimble — who was paired with Sgt. Bob Kiser, a combat veteran from Johnstown, Pa., in the exercise — just spent a year in        Iraq with the 10th Mountain Division.

"No training can compare to real combat," said Trimble, of Seattle. "But this will take away the initial shock for a lot of soldiers. This training will definitely save lives."

Since 2000, the Army has upgraded and broadened the training for its medics, extending instruction from 10 weeks to 16 weeks so soldiers emerge with the qualifications of a nationally certified EMT, Kiley said. The new centers merge classroom instruction and specialized training with innovative technology and the actual battlefield experiences of combat medics, Kiley said.

"We are learning lessons of the battlefield today that we need to impart to our medics. We can't wait for them to get to combat to learn those lessons," Kiley said. Presently, the survival rate for wounded soldiers is over 90 percent, the highest in the Army's history.

Fort Drum's simulation center contains more than $1 million in high-tech equipment and supplies, including three computerized mannequins, said Lt. Col. Drew Kosmowski, the division surgeon.

"The mannequins can breathe, bleed, blink and even talk to give the medic the feedback needed to manage treatment," Kosmowski said. "Their condition will improve if the proper interventions are performed. The mannequin will die if it is not properly cared for."

The four simulation rooms are carefully monitored, with a control room that allows an operator to control light levels, temperature, smoke, strobes, smells and other stressors while observing and recording the training, Kosmowski said.

One of the rooms is a replica field clinic. Trimble and Kiser worked in a simulated field evacuation site. Two other rooms recreate combat zones. Sand and debris cover the floors; images of a village at war cover the walls. There are sandbags, barbed wire, weapons and other military equipment spread about. Mannequins serve as dead bodies and severed limbs.

In one room, there is a mock-up of the inside of an UH-1 medevac helicopter that allows medics to train in tight spaces. The dummy chopper sits on springs that can be vibrated to imitate the rocking of a flying helicopter.

"Before, the alternative was you learned it in a classroom," Trimble said. "The most stress you had was from the drill sergeant standing over you yelling."

Outside the center, a 14-acre training area trains medics for patient extrication and evacuation.

In one training sequence, a medic must sprint 100 yards to a fallen comrade in the battlefield — actually a 165-pound mannequin. Hoisting the mannequin on to his back, the medic must carry it 50 feet out of the line of fire, quickly assemble a plastic portable stretcher then drag the patient another 100 feet where the victim is transferred to a regular litter.

With a partner, the medic must next navigate an obstacle course with the stretcher, going over high and low walls and through barbed wire. Physically and mentally fatigued, the medic is then hurried into one of the combat simulation rooms to treat a wounded soldier in the midst of a gun battle.

The simulation rooms also can be used to present medics with psychological, emotional and moral dilemmas, said Kosmowski.

In one scenario, medics come upon a pregnant Iraqi woman, an insurgent and an American soldier. All three are severely wounded and will die without immediate care. The medic can only save one.

It might seem an easy choice to treat the fallen soldier, but Kiser said a medic must evaluate each situation and decide who has the best chance of survival.

"We have to make difficult decisions out there, and make them fast," Kiser said. "It helps tremendously if you've had a chance to think something through in here first."

___

Fort Drum: http://www.drum.army.mil