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RED SEA (NNS) –
Aboard the amphibious transport dock ship USS New York (LPD 21), Sailors and Marines train for a myriad situations while deployed to the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations.
The New York’s medical team takes basic training a step further by performing scenario-based exercises to ensure their personnel are more than ready to handle any life-saving intervention they may come across.
“A corpsman, being able to come on scene and start life-saving interventions, is paramount,” said Lt. Cmdr. Travis Landry, New York senior medical officer. “Life-saving interventions start at the scene and having a team proficient and trained to be ready to react to anything independently ensures that the best care is available to our Navy and Marine Corps teams 24/7. Naval history is littered with examples of corpsmen acting independently and saving lives in every clime and place. We want to uphold the traditions by ensuring the highest level of training and care is able to be provided in the most extreme of circumstances.”
The scenario-based training helps corpsmen get repetitions in before a real medical emergency happens.
“You can only learn so much from reading a book or looking at power points, and you gain no confidence without actually practicing your craft,” said Senior Chief Hospital Corpsman Andrew Chubb, the medical leading chief petty officer. “Look at it like a weapon qualification. You can't say you are an expert shot unless you actually go to the range and shoot on multiple occasions.”
The corpsmen say they understand how important these trainings are to make them better every day.
“Medicine is a practice, not a profession,” said Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Jennai Jordan, a corpsman aboard New York. “One great thing about my community is no matter how long or short you've been practicing medicine, we all learn new things. By repeating different scenarios, we become more efficient and familiar with certain illnesses and injuries, which give us confidence when treating actual causalities.”
They also know how important this training can be to service members and how it could mean the difference between a service member coming home to their family.
“It is extremely important for a corpsman to be able to start interventions by themselves,” said Hospital Corpsman 1st Class Anknesha Shepherd, a corpsman aboard New York. “It can be the difference of life and death.”
The medical department hopes to extend the training not just to the corpsman but to the rest of the crew.
“We are starting with the basics and as we continue these scenarios, the training is becoming more complex with multiple layers built in,” said Chubb. “We will have a training where we will make the stretcher bearers and the corpsmen respond, moving the patient to the battle dressing station and having to manage them without a provider, just like they would in general quarters. In the time of need, the crew becomes stretcher bearers, and the stretcher bearers become the corpsmen and the corpsmen become the providers. We will continue to train for that.”
Even though the training has started with the basics, the corpsmen have already shown improvement.
“We have been graced with some truly stupendous teachers on this deployment with the [fleet surgical team] and [Marine] staff giving a wider breadth of knowledge than myself or Senior Chief Chubb could provide on our own,” said Landry. “They have learned how to set up ventilators, new and different labs, medication administration, and patient movement amongst others skills. I would say that the medical team has only become more prepared for scenarios as deployment has gone on.”
The skills they learn from these training will not only help them on the New York, but for the rest of their career.
“The confidence level of the department as a whole has increased,” said Chubb. “The corpsmen are more motivated and are comfortable doing more. It has been great seeing them growing in their profession and it has made me proud knowing that they are my reliefs in our Navy.”
For more information, visit http://www.navy.mil/, http://www.facebook.com/usnavy/ or http://www.twitter.com/usnavy/.
For more news from USS New York (LPD 21), visit http://www.navy.mil/local/LPD21/ or http://www.facebook.com/ussnewyorklpd21/?refequalsts/
| Date Taken: | 03.18.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 03.30.2020 16:13 |
| Story ID: | 366191 |
| Location: | RED SEA |
| Web Views: | 455 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Preparing for the Fight: New York’s Medical Team Trains for every situation, by PO1 Lyle Wilkie, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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