Page 154 - Journal of Special Operations Medicine - Fall 2015

The Mabry Question: Who From a Senior Army
Owns Battlefield Medicine? Flight Surgeon

“During my Medical Corps career I received ZERO
• All 3 SGs have endorsed TCCC training for medics training from the AMEDD on pre-hospital care. There
• Both the Defense Health Board and the Assistant Secretary was no training about or concerning pre-hospital
of Defense for Health Affairs have recommended TCCC trauma care within the AMEDD Officer Basic Course,
training for everyone (to include physicians and PAs) the AMEDD Officer Advanced Course, Command and
assigned to deploying combat units – twice. General Staff College and even, realistically, the C4
• BUT – battlefield trauma care in combat units is owned by course. The C4 course (in my era) started at the Role
the unit commanders. 1. There was some evacuation planning but no
• Neither the DHB nor ASDHA are in their chain of command. mention of actual hands on care standards. So, it is
• For TCCC to be effectively incorporated into combat units, reasonable to expect that my peers who are now
senior leaders got the exact same lack of pre-hospital
it must be an integral part of their warrior culture: shoot,
move, communicate, AND care for your wounded buddies care training. I am an "expert" because everything I
learned about pre-hospital care was delivered by
th
(75 RR Model).
USASOC.”

JTS – SOUTHCOM E-mail 2014: HM2
Telecon: 13 Nov 2014 Serving with the Marines

Senior Enlisted SOF Medic “I personally de-issued the Morphine IM autoinjectors
• TCCC courses used to train units deploying and issued solely Ketamine (Intranasal kits) and
OTFC. One of my primary tasks was as the narcotics
to SOUTHCOM often use an abridged and custodian that issued and de issued narcotics to
altered TCCC curriculum rather than the one providers and medics during the deployment
found on the official TCCC websites. The ……..As of yesterday, I was given clearance by the
curriculum found on the official TCCC Medical Officer who deployed with us (and oversaw
websites is often being modified at the unit the ketamine rollout to our line corpsman during the
deployment) to write a short white paper about our
level by physicians with little or no training in ketamine program in Afghanistan. I will expound
prehospital trauma care. more on the above cases and I will most definitely
send you a copy. ”

CPT Nick Studer Does This Make a Difference
Emails - Jan 15 for Our Casualties?

USAF 4N Medic Training • YES!
• “….they are receiving a 1-2 hour exposure to • The JTS and AFME have an ongoing trauma care
TCCC during BMT, and not during the 4N tech Performance Improvement process.
school itself. After that is variable with no • The intent is to identify potentially preventable
standardization from what I can tell”. …..”TCCC as deaths and adverse outcomes
a doctrine is not a part of the general 4N MTL nor
a focus of the curriculum. The Navy/Air Force • There are still preventable deaths and adverse
combined EMT course that starts 4N "tech school" outcomes being noted that could have been
is designed to get folks past the Nation Registry of avoided by adherence to TCCC Guidelines and
EMT's testing in order to generate a civilian JTS Clinical Practice Guidelines.
certification. “ • The acceptable number of preventable deaths is:
ZERO.

142 Journal of Special Operations Medicine Volume 15, Edition 3/Fall 2015