Photo By Andria Allmond | Kris Lucus, left, an exercise role player from Westby, Wis., plays a mother who lost...... read more read more
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Tech. Sgt. Andria Allmond
111th Attack Wing Public Affairs
Mauston, Wis. – In a critical component of exercise PATRIOT North 2016, members of the National Guard provided medical backing to the staff at Mile Bluff Medical Center here July 19.
Playing a supportive role to their civilian counterparts, an Air National Guard Health Response Team (HRT) set up a medical tent outside the center to help tackle patient overflow, while the Army National Guard supplied aeromedical airlift.
“We are here to help out the medical center with any patient that is what we call ‘walking wounded’ -- bumps, bruises, scrapes,” said Tech. Sgt. Kelly Goodman, a health care administrator with the 124th Medical Group of the Idaho Air National Guard. “Any burden that we can take off of the personnel and resources of Mile Bluff [Medical Center] will help them so that they can take care of the more serious injuries.”
During the three-day long exercise, the HRT is postured to follow a routine. First, a patient arrives at the medical center by either vehicular transport or airlift. When the mock patient arrives on site, they are escorted into the emergency room to undergo triage. The civilian medical team determines the severity of the injured party based on a rating system – green, red or yellow. Those that fall into the green category, the most mild, are then walked over to the HRT.
Goodman said that so far, some of the wounded ushered into the HRT tent feigned illnesses and injuries like food poisoning, lacerations and dehydration. All have been health concerns that the Guard’s medical team can easily treat in their field tent. Treatments can last as little as 10 minutes or up to 45 minutes, if the team is depending on transportation to another facility.
“Our nurse here and I will coordinate with the medical center if we have a patient needing a treatment that we can’t supply here,” Goodman said. “In that situation, we would coordinate with the [Expeditionary Medical Support] back at Volk Field [Air National Guard Base] or the civilian side to get them to a facility that has more capabilities.”
The staff at Mile Bluff Medical Center participated in the PATRIOT North exercise last year and welcomed the training again.
“In this exercise now, our hospital is already well over capacity; that and other things in the community have triggered the [state] response of the National Guard coming to assist us,” said Mary Krowley, the Mile Bluff Medical Center director of emergency management, regarding the current exercise scenario. “The [National Guard] is going to help us get our patient volume to where it’s manageable for our hospital again.”
During the exercise, situations were thrown at the civilian and military medical crews. To continue providing patient care through adversity, networking and communication proved imperative.
“For the exercise, there has been a lot of working together [between military and civilian members],” said Krowley. “The military has embedded liaisons into our processes and we have embedded liaisons into their processes; we know we have to work back and forth together. During this exercise we’re learning a lot of what we still need to do to be homeland-capable.”
| Date Taken: | 07.19.2016 |
| Date Posted: | 07.19.2016 21:35 |
| Story ID: | 204428 |
| Location: | MAUSTON, WI, US |
| Web Views: | 158 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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