Tactical Medicine

[Guest guest]

With the recent events at Ft. Hood we can see the importance of training first

responders and EMS personnel in tactical medicine. Most of those who survived

their wounds can not only thank the quick response by the Ft. Hood police

department but also all of the soldiers on scene who had received Combat

Lifesaver training and were able to treat the wounded until EMS arrived. EMS can

no longer sit back and 'stage' they have to be able to respond quickly with

personnel trained and equipped to enter the warm and hot zones to treat and

evacuate the wounded. The military's Tactical Combat Casualty Care course

(TC-3) which came out in 1996 and is revised annually by the Committee on TC-3

has become the standard in training combat and tactical medics. The Combat

Lifesaver course is a shortened version of the TC-3 course but covers the same

topics and each soldier is trained to the first responder level. In 2009 there

have been more than a dozen attacks in the U.S. which have killed more than 80

people and wounded hundreds more. With the amount of violence we are seeing

with the possibility of more incidents like the one we saw at Ft. Hood, the

civilian community must follow the military's example and begin training local

first responders which include fire and police personnel in these same

lifesaving techniques and tactics.