MARINE CORPS BASE QUANTICO, Va. -- “This hurts! I’m all tingly!” Firefighter/Paramedic Joshua Waddell protested as three corpsmen from Naval Health Clinic Quantico checked his vital signs and assessed his injuries in one of the clinic’s classrooms.
After strapping a neck brace on him, the corpsmen attempted to move him onto a stretcher.
“Ow! Woman!” he howled as Lt. j.g. Stephanie Beatty tried to manipulate his limp, crooked leg. “What the hell are you guys doing to me?”
Waddell, of Security Battalion’s Fire and Emergency Services Department, was pulling from his own experiences to play the part of an injured patient during the last day of a joint International Trauma Life Support course that seven corpsmen and seven firefighter/paramedics took between July 15 and 18 at the clinic.
It was the first time the clinic and base firefighters had done the training together.
“We’re trying to come together as a team to make sure the transfer from clinic to the units really goes well,” said Usysses Taormina, assistant chief of emergency medical services for Security Battalion.
Often, in the case of Marines injured in training, the clinic corpsmen are the first on the scene, and they turn the patient over to Security Battalion’s emergency medical personnel.
Taormina said the two agencies want to familiarize themselves with each other’s training and staff to better cooperate on patient treatment. With half of the Fire Department Division’s paramedics being new and with recent heavy turnover at the clinic, he said, getting to know each other is especially important. Getting some extra training doesn’t hurt either.
The 16-hour ITLS course, which was given over the course of four days to allow for flexibility, teaches emergency procedures for especially traumatic events like gunshot wounds, bomb blasts and vehicle accidents. Subjects include helmet removal, spinal immobilization, intravenous therapy, intraosseous infusion, use of a needle for chest decompression, surgical cricothyrotomy—similar to a tracheostomy—and others.
The Fire and Emergency Services Department gives the course every two years, and it’s the sort of training the corpsmen would likely receive before being deployed to combat zones. Most of the corpsmen who attended last week’s training work the satellite clinics at Officer Candidates School and The Basic School, where injuries are more common than around the rest of the base.
Lt. Cmdr. Christopher Niles, head of the Medical Home Port Department at the clinic, took the course to update his skills before leaving for a trauma training team in Africa in September.
“It’s kind of the gold standard for paramedics and EMTs,” he said, adding that even after 16 years of nursing, the course improved his injury assessment skills and updated him on changes in equipment.
Also, he said, “As a nurse, I always get the packaged patient. This showed me how to package them up first and stabilize them.”
Because Fire and Emergency Services funded the training, the clinic is now helping the base firefighters with Basic Life Support and Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support training, Niles said.
Firefighter/Paramedic Brian Weston, who headed the training session, said the two organizations also plan to hold joint training for neonatal resuscitation in the near future.
“The more training we have together and the more interaction, the more we’ll be able to work seamlessly together,” Weston said.
— Writer: mdicicco@quanticosentryonline.com