188th Medical Group completes casualty care training

Photo By Capt. Dylan Hollums | Airmen from the 188th Wing completed an intensive two-day course here, June 3 – 4, 2021.  The training involved airway management, tourniquet application, wound bandaging, and various stretcher-carrying techniques  

FORT SMITH, AR, UNITED STATES

06.04.2021

Story by Capt. Dylan Hollums 

188th Wing

EBBING AIR NATIONAL GUARD BASE, Ark – Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC) completed by 188th Medical Group personnel.
 
Twenty-one Airmen from the 188th Wing completed an intensive two-day course here, June 3 – 4, 2021.  The training involved airway management, tourniquet application, wound bandaging, and various stretcher-carrying techniques. Students learned to work together, and with their civilian counterparts, in small-team structures to stress the importance of communication.

The course was taught by Rescue Task Force, a civilian team who specializes in integrating disaster response, emergency medicine, and limited resource trauma management training with local first responders and military personnel.

“We take a crawl, walk, run approach to training,” said Edwin Lard, Rescue Task Force program manager.  “ At RTF, we pride ourselves on reality-based immersion training, taught by combat proven educators with decades of overseas expertise.”

Day one started with FEMA classroom certifications, CPR and burn-victim stabilization, and gunshot wound bandaging in response to an active-shooter exercise. As the sun set, the students started night-time search and recovery operations in various natural disaster scenarios. Airmen were tasked with recovering victims from tornado-damaged houses, small-confined spaces, and fire-destroyed buildings.

“This will help us improve our crisis reaction time,” said Master Sgt. Marcus R. Floyd, 188th Medical Group training manager.  “We worked on shaving off lifesaving seconds during the critical golden hour to help us mitigate injuries or further loss of life.”

The second day of training began with mass-casualty recovery triage training with motor-vehicle accident versus train simulations and an aircraft-crash site. At the end of the day, they began a “sprinting” stage of training that culminated in air-evacuations with two helicopters from Mercy Medical and Air Evac Lifeteam.

The skills learned are not just applicable in a military career field, according to Senior Airman Andrew Puckett, 188th aerospace medical technician. “I can apply this to my civilian career as a medic on movie sets if a stuntman breaks a leg or suffers from heat exhaustion. I wouldn’t have the credentials to work in movies, if it wasn’t for this job.”

Floyd, who is also a training captain with the Fort Smith Fire Department, questioned “Will our Airmen apply the skills learned this weekend in a military setting? Of course, but more importantly, we are preparing them to respond to real-life emergencies in their local community.”

The 188th is schedule to host another TCCC course in September for Air National Guard Wings from Oklahoma and Missouri.

For more information visit: https://www.naemt.org/education/naemt-tccc

• Date Taken: 06.04.2021
• Date Posted: 06.23.2021 12:48
• Story ID: 399529
• Location: FORT SMITH, AR, US