An Cosantóir

An Cosantóir Dec 2017 / Jan 2018 www.dfmagazine.ie 14 | By CPl lEE CoylE PhoToS ARMN ADAM MuRPhy During World War one British doctors used over 108 million bandages and over seven thousand tons of cotton wool, these figures truly show the need for a highly trained Medical Corps that is able to adapt and overcome the challenges of the bat- tlefield to render aid to those who need it . The Defence Forces Medical Corps is an essential part of every duty and exercise that is conducted through the Defence Forces, this means being effective for Aid To Civil Power (ATCP) and Aid To Civil Authority (ATCA) operations at home and also on overseas missions. These highly trained medical personnel conduct courses and training from various agencies around the country. Currently running in University College Dublin (UCD) is an Advanced Paramedic (AP) course and a Combat Medical Technician (CMT) course, which is currently undertaking their Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) phase of the course. UCD is under contract by the DF to conduct three CMT courses, with the first course starting in 2016. The current 2017 CMT class has 25 military students and are joined by members of An Garda Síochána's Emergency Response Unit (ERU) and Civil Defence on the course. The AP course has members from the National Ambulance Service and Dublin Fire Brigade joining them. UCD training staff contacted the CMU about setting up a mass casualty and triage exercise incident that would exercise the AP and CMT students in the management of a major incident. Coy Sgt Dave O'Connor and Sgt Joanne Doyle of the CMU were tasked with coming up with a vigor- ous exercise that would put the students of both courses through their paces. We spoke with Coy Sgt O'Connor about the exercise; he told us, "This is the third exercise of this kind I have organised, with the last two only involving the advanced paramedic, so I was happy to include the Combat Medical Technicians in this one." He added, "With the number of personnel increased, I was able to expand on the exercise and I also chose to bring it more up to date with what has happened around the world" The training objectives of this exercise were to test com- mand and control of students in command appointments, to expose students to multiple casualties and manage them as per protocols, allow students to work in a multi- agency medical environment and to allow civilian students to work in a care under fire scenario. The setting for the exercise was the Military Training Facility (MTF) DFTC and the scenario was based on mul- tiple lone wolf attacks hitting urban areas across Ireland, which allowed the CMU to create an idea that when the students were launched to the scene of the attack that no other help would be arriving. The attack scenario that the students would be dealing with involved a vehicle that drove at speed through an urban area hitting pedestrians

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