PENSACOLA, Fla. (March 23, 2017) – Sailors from Naval Expeditionary Medical Training Institute (NEMTI) at Camp Pendleton, Calif., led a Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC) Instructor Course at Naval Hospital Pensacola (NHP) the week of March 20.
The purpose of the course was to provide Navy hospital corpsman E-5 and above with the knowledge and skills required to instruct others in providing medical care in a combat environment following the principles of pre-hospital trauma life support and the guidelines and mission of TCCC.
NHP Sailors were also joined by Navy corpsmen from Naval Hospital Beaufort, S.C. (NHB) for the week-long training.
“Overall the course has been great,” said Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class Jeffrey Cha, from NHB. “The instructors from NEMTI have done a great job refreshing all the concept and theories.”
Classroom training and overview kicked off the week, reinstating best TCCC practices and techniques, while flexing the Sailors’ skills as capable instructors.
“We start off with our [TCCC] provider course, which includes our classroom session,” said Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class Clayton Clark, from NEMTI. “We teach everything from an intro of TCCC all the way up to the medical interventions.”
Following indoor training, students went through a field exercise where their knowledge and abilities are put to the test. Sailors low-crawled to an area near a tree line staged to simulate injured personnel. Realistic dummies were dressed in torn uniforms, sporting multiple simulated wounds while waiting for care.
Students arrived on scene and simulated treating injuries while instructors, simulating distractions in a combat environment, yelled, pushed and attempted to disorient Sailors while they went through the TCCC steps.
“I’ve gone through courses where you get yelled at and people try to distract you from the task at hand,” said Cha. “For me, it’s filtering out everything and just getting into that mind set of ‘Okay. Focus on the patient.’”
Clark said one of the main points of the field exercise is putting stress on the students to show them some of what to expect in a combat scenario.
“I’ve used TCCC interventions myself in a combat situation,” said Clark. “It’s a fast, simple algorithm starting out with massive hemorrhaging to air-way and making sure the patient receives proper medications.”
The course ended with a role-reversal where the students practiced teaching the instructors in both the classroom and during a short field exercise. The goal of the last days of the course is to ensure Sailors not only know and can perform TCCC, but can also instruct it to others.
“TCCC is important because it is the fundamentals of battlefield medicine,” said Clark. “Everybody, especially medical providers, should know how to do it so they can save lives.”
NEMTI is a detachment of Navy Medicine Operational Training Center in Pensacola, Fla., the global leader in operational medicine, which supports multiple commands throughout the country in training for operational medicine and aviation survival.
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