LUKE AIR FORCE BASE, Ariz. -- 944th medical personnel practiced their skills while taking fire from ‘enemy’ forces Apr 22 at Auxiliary Field 1.
The 944th Aeromedical Staging Squadron Joint Military Operations Training Initiative (JMOTI) team hosted a weeklong Pre-Hospital Trauma Life Support (PHTLS) and Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC) class for 21 medical technicians, nurses, and physicians.
The students, two members of the Hurricane Hunters and the rest with the 403rd Aeromedical Staging Squadron, traveled to Luke from Kessler Air Force Base, Mississippi for the course.
“The purpose of the class is to save lives on the battlefield,” said Master Sgt. Christopher Martin, 944 ASTS NCO in charge, JMOTI. “The U.S. has achieved unprecedented survival rates as high as 98 percent for casualties arriving alive to combat hospitals. Combat casualty care begins at the point of injury and continues through evacuation to those facilities.”
The joint training consisted of four days of in-class lectures and hands-on-training and on the final day, the group went out into the Arizona desert to an off-base training location to put what they learned into action.
The class was armed with paintball training weapons, protective gear and broke up into small groups then given four different scenarios. Each scenario had a learning objective that was taught in class throughout the week.
“The training was amazing,” said Tech. Sgt. Tiesha Taylor, 403 ASTS medical technician. “It provided us the opportunity to train as group, and to identify areas that required additional training. My favorite part of the training was the last day when we had the chance to take the things we learned in the classroom setting and put them into practice.”
Thirteen 944 ASTS and Medical Squadron JMOTI core staff and instructors facilitated the event as well as members from 944th Security Forces Squadron and the 56th Civil Engineering Squadron explosive ordnance and devices section.
“We are providing the most current lifesaving skills information coming straight from the battlefield,” continued Martin. “This information is not only given via presentation but members who attend will have an opportunity to practice these skills in labs and with field training.”
The training is based on current evidence research to the approach of medicine in the field. TCCC is an international course that gathers information from many different sources and provides educational courses for first responders. From this class, the students received 32 Continuing Education Unit’s each, with a total of 672 CEU’s awarded toward their certification requirements. The integration of existing medical training platforms such as this, results in reduced training costs Air Force-wide.