An Cosantóir the official magazine of the Irish Defence Forces and Reserve Defence Forces.
Issue link: https://digital.jmpublishing.ie/i/1523201
www.military.ie THE DEFENCE FORCES MAGAZINE the last war fight the next one'. The Defence Forces has gained valuable information from the student's lived experiences, particularly in the areas of injury patterns from artillery weapons, such as the importance of controlling catastrophic hemorrhage and wound packing, and casualty evacuation timelines which have become lengthened due to the dynamic nature of the conflict and the use of drones. The casualties are usually carried out by stretcher for 5-6km at night before reaching a vehicle that can transport the casualty to a Casualty Collection Point to receive medical treatment. Most movement of casualties cannot be moved by day due to enemy surveillance which leads to the rethinking of the use of tourniquets as the evacuation time can take 12-24 hrs to move 20km. We teach now to downgrade any tourniquet to Celox™ gauze & trauma dressing within two hours unless the casualty has a limb amputation or is unconscious due to major hemorrhage. Lastly, the importance was reinforced of trained and equipped personnel in the sections supported by Paramedics & Advanced Paramedics both on deployment and domestic service. This capacity building mission has had a positive benefit for CMU personnel and will have downrange effects for how the Irish Defence Forces conducts medical training across all three service arms in the future. We are now actively looking at replacing our basic medical training which is delivered to line personnel with TCCC training. This new training pipeline will be administered by the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians (USA) which is the regulatory body for all TCCC matters within NATO. Opportunities within this field will eventually, pending legislative changes, lead to field surgical interventions and fluid resuscitation. RSM David O'Connor is the Senior Medical Instructor in Medical School CMU DFTC and has completed four (4) of the five (5) medical training deployments to Germany. RSM O'Connor is a Tactical Combat Casualty Care Instructor and also a Pre-Hospital Emergency Care Tutor. DF medics passing on their expertise to students RSM Dave O'Connor assessing the soldier's skills DF Medics in Germany