Photo By Cpl. Jaewoo Oh | Soldiers from Headquarters and Headquarters Battery, 3rd Battalion 16th Field...... read more read more
CAMP CASEY, South Korea – The Health Care Specialists of 210th Field Artillery Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division/ROK-U.S Combined Division, recently conducted a combined medical field training exercise, at Camps Casey and Hovey, South Korea, Aug. 23-28.
This exercise was designed to train, execute and evaluate the Soldiers’ mission essential tasks of providing health service support under realistic environments. By going through the training, the medics were able to get hands-on training and skill development with the health care assets available to them on the Peninsula.
“As they progress through the training, the Soldiers became more familiarized and more knowledgeable with the resources available to them in this theater of operations,” said, 2nd Lt. Andrew Obelgoner, Headquarters and Headquarters Battery, 210th FA Bde, 2nd Inf. Div Combined. Brigade Medical Planner.
The initial phase of the exercise allowed the Soldiers to perform emergency deployment readiness drills where all the units start their deployment. The units also set up their Battalion Aid Stations in order to provide a space for medics to train their close-contact health care operations with the patients.
“They are running 24 hour operations through the week out of the Combined Troop Aid Station; they are seeing all the patients there, just as though they would be if they were at a deployed environment,” said Obelgoner, a native from Macon, Georgia.
Over the course of the following days, the medics of the brigade rotated through Medical Evacuation Training, Mass Casualty Training, and Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Training to ensure steady performance of medical care while experiencing realistic environments.
“There is a difference between Soldiers who have gone through the field training exercises and those who haven’t,” said Obelgoner. “Through repetitions under pressure and stress, they build confidence and become more and more professional.”
Being an expert on an operation ensures safety and success of the operation in the field. Medical Evacuation operations, for example, can be highly dangerous tasks when treated inappropriately.
“We are dealing with heavily dangerous rotary wings here,” said Capt. Dawn Herron, a native of Clarksville, Tennessee, an aeromedical evacuation officer and a medical evacuation instructor from Company C, 3rd General Support Aviation Battalion, 2nd Aviation Regiment, 2nd Combat Aviation Brigade, 2nd Inf. Div. Combined. “There are safety concerns, so everyone has to have clear understandings on MEDEVAC operations.”
In addition to learning detailed capabilities of air ambulances, the Soldiers studied how to load patients safely into the helicopters. Once Soldiers gained confidence in the routine, they practiced calling for nine line MEDEVAC requests and loading patients onto rotary wings for multiple iterations.
“It is up to the medics on the ground and in the air to do everything necessary to increase the survivability of the patients. Our purpose is to keep the patient alive from point A to B, as fast as possible,” said Herron.
Medics go through multiple practices to forge their skills to treat the patients under pressure, as they cannot afford to make mistakes. However, there is a possibility of the medics going into panic or disorientation under certain situations. Those situations include when there are more patients than one can handle, or during a CBRN attack.
“They need to be confident because in the event of treating contaminated casualties, they will have to execute operations in these protective masks,” said Chief Warrant Officer 2 Humphrey. B. Hills II, a CBRN technician from 3rd Battalion 16th Field Artillery Regiment, 210th FA Bde, 2nd Inf. Div. Combined from New Orleans, Louisiana.
It is up to the medics in the field to take care of all the injured Soldiers and conserve life as much as possible. This is one of the hardest tasks, because nobody can determine how many injured Soldiers there will be before the incident takes place.
“There is no telling how many patients will come in or how serious their injuries will be, before going into the field, we try to overcome this using Mass Casualty (MASCAL) training,” said Obelgoner. “In MASCAL training, there are more patients in need than you are capable of providing, so they put the patients into categories from severe to mild by triaging the patients. It determines what kind of care they will receive.”
“By putting the medics under a lot of stress with a large amount of casualties and then reinforcing the necessary measures, we ensure that we do as much good for the most people,” said Obelgoner.
| Date Taken: | 08.28.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 09.14.2015 21:08 |
| Story ID: | 176031 |
| Location: | DONGDUCHEON, 41, KR |
| Hometown: | CLARKSVILLE, TN, US |
| Hometown: | MACON, GA, US |
| Hometown: | NEW ORLEANS, LA, US |
| Web Views: | 92 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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