Thread: Emergency/Tactical Medicine Training seminar

Some years ago I was the first on the scene after a pretty bad motorcycle wreck. Afterward, I went around looking for some first aid courses.

Most of the old-style Red Cross and Scout courses seem to be either gone or oriented entirely toward heart attacks. I tried the fire department, police, and several local hospitals to see if they had anything. Nope, all gone due to fear of liability. Their only response to anything was now "call 911."

Finally, a friend of mine remembered he'd taken an Air Force emergency medic course years ago, and still had the study guide for it. I based my plans on those.

The USAF course wasn't for combat medics, it was for ordinary troops, and its focus was "stabilize and call for help." It turns out that without extensive knowledge and materials, there's not a whole lot you can do for a seriously injured person. Those come down to:

A) if blood is jetting out somewhere, apply pressure or a tourniquet

B) if they can't breathe, try to clear the airway

C) if air is blowing out of their chest, plug it up

Less-enthusiastic leakage of fluids, guts or eyeballs hanging out, compound fractures, and so forth are serious, but they're not immediately fatal. Let the real medics deal with that.

There was a section on CPR. I had a CPR cert years ago. I still remember how, but unless it is someone personally known to me, sorry fella, hope the next guy offers to do something about it. The instance of communicable diseases is so high now, I'm not taking the risk. Professionals get paid to, I don't.

So, the emergency kit I carried on the bike consisted of some surgical tubing (powdered, in a sealed bag to keep it from going gummy) for a tourniquet, one of those reflective Mylar "space blankets", a razor blade, some duct tape, and a couple of chemical light sticks.

The "blanket" is just thin plastic and about the size of a pack of playing cards. The razor blade, tape, and a piece cut off the blanket would deal with a sucking chest wound. But its main purpose, and the purpose of the two light sticks, was due to the fact we were doing a lot of sport riding in the Ozarks. In the wreck I encountered that started all this, there was no cellular signal; I had to flag cars down and send them for help. And it was getting dark. And I was in an unfamiliar area, and not precisely sure where I was. And the rider and his bike were in a deep ditch, not visible from the road. If I'd had to leave, I might not have been able to find the site again. So the reflective silver blanket and the light sticks were for that. Plus, many bad wrecks happen in the rain or at night, which would make the site even harder to find.

The full kit contained:

Mylar "Space Blanket"
two chemical light sticks

one single-edge razor blade
pack of "clotting powder" from the local lumber yard
three feet of surgical tape
three feet of 3" gauze
two feet of surgical rubber tubing