Combat medical care showcased at UCHealth

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO, UNITED STATES

09.22.2023

Story by Staff Sgt. Michael Wood 

10th Special Forces Group (Airborne)

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Green Berets assigned to 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) partnered with UCHealth Memorial Hospital Central in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Sept. 22, 2023. This one-day training event allowed 10th SFG (A) medical sergeants to demonstrate the Special Forces medical capabilities under austere conditions to the UCHealth medical staff.

Special Forces Medical Sergeants are trained to provide care in various settings, including emergency, routine and long-term care. They specialize in managing trauma, handling infectious diseases, providing cardiac life support and performing surgical procedures. To maintain their medical certification, the 10th Group medical sergeants are required to attend a medical refresher course, held at Fort Liberty, North Carolina, every two years. Additionally, they must complete a medical proficiency rotation at a civilian hospital every three years.

The Colorado Military Health System has a partnership with UCHealth Memorial Hospital to enhance the training opportunities for military healthcare personnel, so they can acquire and sustain essential emergency clinical skills.

“When we do our rotations here at Memorial, we are working in all of the departments,” said the senior enlisted medical advisor with 10th SFG (A). “We are delivering babies in [obstetrics], working in the trauma bays, burn wards; we are trying to get our hands on every little piece of medicine as we can.”

The Green Berets’ demonstration for the UCHealth medical staff showcased the Army’s tactical combat casualty care (T-CCC). T-CCC is medical care designed as a first line of casualty care administration in order to prevent a loss of limbs or worse for service members before they can get medically evacuated.

"A good portion of our staff are always looking for more trauma education," said Megan Thimell, clinical nurse educator for the emergency department at UCHealth Memorial Hospital Central. "A lot of them don't know what it is like to not work at Central and have all the resources we have; this [training] simulates what happens when you work in a more rural environment, or when you are limited to not having all the doctors, nurses, techs and all the supplies that we have here."

One of Thimell’s roles is to provide monthly situational trauma alert training (STAT) for the Memorial Hospital Central, North and the Trauma Centers staff in Colorado Springs. This training stimulates realistic emergency medical situations, from the patient entering the hospital to discharge.

“Whenever we do [lessons] about the importance of STAT and are asked ‘why do we do this?’ we tell them it’s derived from military practices,” said Thimell.


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• Date Taken: 09.22.2023
• Date Posted: 12.11.2023 12:00
• Story ID: 458541
• Location: COLORADO SPRINGS, CO, US