Medical training brings basics to battlefield

Photo By Spc. Amanda Solitario | Spc. Michael Williams a medic with the 4th Infantry Division based out of Baghdad marks a man with the letter "T" for tourniquet and the time the tourniquet was wrapped around his arm.  

BALAD, IRAQ

10.27.2006

Story by Spc. Amanda Solitario 

210th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment

by Spc. Amanda Solitario
210th MPAD

LSA ANACONDA, Iraq— Soldiers across Iraq fly to Anaconda to take part in some serious medical training that they cannot find anywhere else in the country.

Once per month, the Sgt. 1st Class Tricia L. Jameson Combat Medical Training Center offers the intense, five-day Combat Medical Advancement Skills Training course. The course is geared toward enhancing the medical knowledge of Soldiers while teaching them how to administer aid to wounded patients in a hostile area.

"It prepares the students to protect themselves and the casualties, and to save lives," said Sgt. 1st Class Michael Manahl of Aimes, Iowa, 3rd Medical Command program coordinator for the Jameson CMTC.

The class highlights the importance of advanced hemorrhage control, which is the number one cause of death due to injury, said Lt. Col. Anthony S. Ramage of Augusta, Ga., critical care consultant for 3rd MEDCOM.

"The more people trained to stop the bleeding, the more lives we will save," he said.

As of now, Anaconda is the only approved location for CMAST in Iraq. It is a 40 credit-hour course divided between class time and hands-on training. The class does count toward promotion points.

Traditionally, the CMAST class was primarily for medics, but the instructors are seeing many Soldiers with various jobs coming through the class.

Manahl said a Soldier's military occupational skill specialty does not have to dictate who is able to provide care to a wounded servicemember.

Ramage said in reality medics cannot be everywhere on the battlefield, so the key is to train as many people as possible to be "mini-medics."

"The medic may be in a vehicle hundreds of meters away from the casualty and unable to get to him for minutes—long enough to bleed to death," he said.

One student, Sgt. Randy Harcrow, a native of Lubbock, Texas and a petroleum supply specialist with 1st Battalion, 17th Field Artillery Regiment, said he was grateful to be able to participate in the program.

Harcrow, who is part of a convoy security team, said he never knows what is going to happen outside the wire, adding that the training boosted his confidence in his abilities to treat injured Soldiers if the situation presented itself.

Prior to taking the class, students must first pass the 17-day Emergency Medical Technology-Basic course, a civilian certification. This is to ensure the Soldier has the fundamental medical knowledge to succeed in CMAST.

As with most military training events, there is a "crawl, walk, run" phase to the program, Manahl said. The work inside the classroom is the crawl phase, and it is here the school's nine instructors coach the students and answer their questions.

One of the most important aspects introduced in the first few days is casualty triage, said Sgt. Joshua Stutzman, a 3rd MEDCOM instructor at the Jameson CMTC.

Stutzman, a Cincinnati, Ohio native, said triage is all about treating as many people as possible with limited supplies, and prioritizing the patients according to their needs.

On the fourth day, the students get to work with a specialized dummy called the METI-man, which stands for Medical Education Technologies Inc. METI-man is a computer- programmed mannequin designed for students working in the medical field.

Stutzman said the METI-man gives the Soldiers the feeling of working on an actual patient. The dummy blinks, talks, breathes, and even bleeds through controls set forth by the instructor.

"It causes the students to react in different ways," he said. "Their interventions can either help him or hurt him."

All the time in the classroom and all the hours spent working with the METI-man, culminates into a mass casualty exercise on the students' fifth and final day.

The students are put to the test by taking their medical knowledge and applying it to a real-life setting where their stress level is heightened and their sense of urgency is pushed to the max, Manahl said.

"We try to base the scenarios off of real-world situations," he said.

In a recent exercise, 12 students found themselves in the midst of a simulated combat area with more wounded than CMAST personnel.

"For a real triage situation, we need to overload the medics and medic capabilities," he said. "So, if there are a dozen students in the class, we are putting 14 patients at them at one time."

Through the morning, the Soldiers had to show the instructors that they could move all the casualties to a safe area, keep an accurate count of the wounded, provide medical care, pull security, and call in medical evacuations.

Manahl said the group struggled at first, but learned from their mistakes the second time around.

He said that after attending this course, the students are more prepared to go out there and treat casualties.

"I feel like I learned enough in this class to go back and train my Soldiers to take care of anybody on the battlefield," Harcrow said. "This class will benefit any Soldier. It is very important especially in this environment."

• Date Taken: 10.27.2006
• Date Posted: 11.14.2006 08:57
• Story ID: 8269
• Location: BALAD, IQ