Photo By Cpl. Sullivan Laramie | Marines and sailors with 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment prepare simulated...... read more read more
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CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. - The noise of battle filled the air as Marines and Navy corpsmen rushed onto the scene. Casualties littered the ground, all wounded and awaiting rescue. Before they could be evacuated, they needed to be stabilized and there were too many for one or two corpsmen to handle.
The scenario was only a simulation designed to test Marines and sailors with 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment during a Tactical Combat Trauma Course on Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, Oct. 14-16, 2015.
The Marines and corpsmen are trained to perform different tasks during the course. Marines learn point-of-care treatment, in which they stabilize wounded personnel just enough to move them to a casualty collection point. The corpsmen then take the lead in directing the care of the wounded troops.
“Corpsmen can’t be everywhere,” said Petty Officer 1st Class David Baumbach, the chief combat trauma instructor with the 2nd Marine Division Combat Skills Center. “They need to have Marines help them out. If they can provide care at the point of injury, it allows the corpsmen to do the more advanced treatment that Marines aren’t trained for.”
Each simulated casualty was assessed by Marines and sailors before being moved to the casualty collection point. Communication between the students in the chaos of treating wounds, searching for the right medical equipment and shouting instructors, was vital to the survival of their patients.
“Communication is a big part of this scenario,” Baumbach said. “If they aren’t talking to each other, then they don’t know what’s going on within the rest of their team. Somebody may need a bandage they don’t have, and if nobody else is listening they won’t be able to get that treatment taken care of.”
That communication is made more difficult with the recent course addition of loud speakers blasting sounds of combat. The mannequins used during the course also add to the realism with bleeding, breathing and audio cues the Marines and sailors have to pay attention to.
“Using these dummies that bleed, breath and talk gives us a sense of what’s going to happen with the casualties,” said Petty Officer 3rd Class Tyler Cornell, a corpsman with 1st Battalion, 6th Marines. “We can practice tourniquet drills on a living person and tighten it to where we think it’s going to stop the bleeding, but if we apply tourniquets to these mannequins and the bleeding doesn’t stop, we’ll have to keep tightening until it does.”
To induce stress further, instructors shouted at the Marines and sailors to work faster as a reminder that one day they may actually be fighting to save lives in combat.
“This training provides us with a realistic sense of the chaos that occurs during a casualty event,” Cornell said. “It allows Marines and sailors to coordinate and communicate during patient care and extraction.”
| Date Taken: | 10.16.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 10.22.2015 13:47 |
| Story ID: | 179648 |
| Location: | CAMP LEJEUNE, NORTH CAROLINA, US |
| Web Views: | 167 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Marines, sailors prepare to treat combat wounds, by Cpl Sullivan Laramie, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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