Combat Care: Gun Totin' Doctors

Reported November 11, 2011

SAN ANTONIO, TX (Ivanhoe Newswire) --Out of their white coats and into camouflage. Doctors and nurses who volunteer for service are required to get a taste of the battlefield before they head to hospitals near war zones. They only have days to train for what they might encounter. We’ll tell you how what they learn from the military, may be the opposite of what they’re taught in school.

These men and women are marching into an ambush. This group is entering a dark, deafening war zone.

“It’s so hard to focus and go with your training,” Lt. Dawn Whiting, a nurse, told Ivanhoe.

It’s what you might expect military recruits to go through before they’re shipped off to the frontlines, but these camo-clad soldiers are medical officers.

“You’re not dealing with trained war fighters in this group,” Dr. Ian Cassady, an Army captain, told Ivanhoe.

“This is about as close as you can get, stress levels of combat, and besides shooting at them, this is all that we can do,” Dr. Brian Powers, a Hospital Corpsman, told Ivanhoe.

For one week, the doctors and nurses go through the high-intensity combat casualty care course. Hospital Corpsman Brian Powers says the point is to raise their stress levels to help them deal with mass casualties during deployment. The physicians are taught they could be the only doctor an injured fighter sees in the first 12 hours of care.

“The last thing you want as a casualty, have your doctor freak out and not know what to do, so that’s why we stress anxiety here,” Dr. Powers said.

Because blood is not readily available at combat hospital they also stress hemorrhage control. Powers says that’s because troops can die from bleeding in under two minutes he tells us you have four to six minutes to deal with breathing issues. Focusing on blood control first, instead of airways goes against what doctors and nurses are usually taught in medical school. Dr. Ian Cassady tells us it takes some getting used to.

“Completely flips everything on its head. You kind of throw what you’re taught out, and almost reverse it,” Dr. Ian Cassady said.

The U.S Military has also adopted a new tourniquet technique for the battlefield. Called the “hasty tourniquet” a doctor or medic who notices bleeding in a patient’s arm or leg will immediately tie it off high and tight. Then once the wound is located they’ll put a tourniquet two to four inches above it. Army officials say the technique has a 99 percent success rate of saving soldiers who are in danger of bleeding to death. Army officials say the hasty tourniquet and hemorrhage control are a few reasons we’re seeing the lowest killed in action rate in U.S Military history. Lieutenant Dawn Whiting says she’s glad the training is prepping her for what she might see overseas.

“But at the same time, it almost overwhelms you to know what you could face,” Lt. Whiting explained.

Dr. Cassady, whose father was a military physician, knows what he signed up for and knows just how intense things can get in the field. Protecting himself so he can help others is a top priority.

“Infantry men first and physicians and providers second,” Dr. Cassady concluded.

What the medical officers learn in this training and when they’re deployed can make a difference here at home. The doctor who helped saved representative Gabrielle Giffords’ life after she was shot in the head in Arizona was a military surgeon. He credits his experience at combat hospitals in Iraq and Afghanistan with his ability to treat Giffords and the ten other victims of that attack.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:

Phillip Reidinger,

PAO Army Medical Department Center and School

Phillip.reidinger@us.army.mil

(201) 221-8580