Photo By Cpl. Michael Bianco | Corpsmen with 3rd Medical Battalion, Combat Logistics Regiment 35, 3rd Marine...... read more read more
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BY Michael Bianco
III Marine Expeditionary Force Public Affairs
MARINE CORPS AIR STATION FUTENMA, Japan — Thirty corpsmen took part in the En Route Care Course at Marine Corps Air Station Futenma Oct. 23, 2008.
The corpsmen from 3rd Medical Battalion, Combat Logistics Regiment 35, 3rd Marine Logistics Group, received training from five naval nurse instructors.
The course, along with two others, the Water Survival Course and the Flight Medic Course, are designed to prepare the corpsmen for combat operations.
During the training, the students learned proper procedures for transporting an injured Marine to a hospital via helicopter.
"They [the corpsmen] already know how to stabilize a wounded warrior," said Lt. Cmdr. Tony Catanese, the naval operations director at U.S. Naval Hospital Pensacola, Fla. "This is to get them familiar with how to package and transport the patient once they are stabilized."
The course, which is required for corpsmen and nurses assigned to Marine units, can be extremely challenging for students and instructors because every aspect must be covered in a limited amount of time – only 26 hours over two and half days, Catanese said.
"The students get blasted with a fire hose of knowledge," he said. "My instructors have to stay at a high level of teaching for three days or we won't get through it all."
The course deals with the "how-to" of preparing a patient for transportation, covering topics such as patient stabilization, securing their gear and preparing and loading a patient into an aircraft.
"As a surgical technician, it helped me better my basic skills as a corpsman," said Petty Officer 3rd Class Joshua A. Harris, a corpsman with 3rd Medical Bn. "In theater, I will have to go out of my primary job."
Lt. Cmdr. Charles L. White, an emergency nurse U.S. Naval Hospital Jacksonville, Fla., hopes when the corpsman have completed the course, they will be able to solve problems unconventionally.
"You're not going to have all the equipment you're going to need," White said. "You have to make things work where no one thinks they will."
Instructors and students agreed one of the most important aspects of the course is how it teaches the corpsmen to remain calm under stressful circumstances.
"We teach them to always expect the worst," Catanese said. "Murphy is always with you."
White believes the course has more than proven its success on the battlefield.
"In my entire seven months in Iraq, I never lost one Marine in a helicopter, and that's thanks to the training we receive here," he said.
| Date Taken: | 10.31.2008 |
| Date Posted: | 10.30.2008 02:50 |
| Story ID: | 25717 |
| Location: | MARINE CORPS AIR STATION FUTENMA, OKINAWA, JP |
| Web Views: | 161 |
| Downloads: | 109 |
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