Picture this...

0300 hours Friday night

You are awakened by dispatch for a call of shots fired. You and your partner @ckemtp (only using him as an example because he's the first one I could think of at the time of writing) arrive on scene and find it secured by PD and find your pt. a 21 y/o male with a GSW to his upper leg and lower back. You treat according to protocol and transport to the trauma center...hopefully with a large bore or 2 in the arm.

same time...defferent location

You are awakened by someone shouting "DOC" you put your gear together while hearing gunfire. You get over and are pointed to your pt, a 21 y/o male with a GSW to his upper leg and lower back. He's CAOx3 and shouting. You pull back the charging handle of your weapon and attempt to make your way to your pt. His buddy nearby has already put a tourniquet on his upper leg. Your pt. is trying his best to return fire the same as you.

The locations: The first one is at your friendly neighborhood housing project with a gangbanger. The second...downtown Tikrit, Baghdad, or Kabul.

Today, the United States is at war. As a combat medic, it is possible that you will be called on to deploy to a foreign country and provide medical care in a combat zone. You need to understand the differences between trauma management in the homeland and trauma management in a foreign country during wartime.

AAOS, 68W Advanced Field Craft, 2009, p. 5

Trauma management in combat has its own hazards (that goes without saying).

Most of the time, "Doc" only has the equipment that's on his back. He's hoping that "Joe" has the basic first aid stuff on his person...or that his battle buddy has taken care of him the best he can.

Let's look at these two again...

@Ckemtp will be en route to the trauma center much sooner than "Doc" will. In combat, there could be as long as 25 minutes or MORE for some kind of transport to the closest hospital...with only 1000mL total of Hextend and 2000mL total of LR to keep "Joe" alive.

I will have to continue this in another post...

I'm no better...

Earlier today, I got an email from @theHappyMedic asking me to clear something up for him because he was in an "email melee" with someone.

He asked me "Are you better because you're a combat medic?"

My short answer was NO.

That email was one reason I decided to start a text blog today. Of course listening to Firefighter Netcast was another.

In the world of the combat medic, I am trained as an Intermediate, but certifed by the NREMT as a BASIC. That's right, I'm an EMT-B for all intents and purposes.

In combat, though (along with on military installations at the local commander's discretion) I'm allowed to do more than I could on my FD where I engineer and run rescue calls.

In one case I can basically
Intubate
Cannulate
Defibrillate
Medicate
Oxygenate

The "medicate" is limited. Sometimes we have a small O2 cylinder, sometimes we don't. THAT depends on our appropriate medical contol (No ASA for your CP, sir.)

In another case I can basically
Oxygenate
Defibrillate
and wait for ALS to show up...usually about 5 minutes after we put our BP cuff on.

In one case, I can look good in a green suit...in another I can look good responding in my T-shirt, blue jeans, work jacket with vest.

Oh, how I'd love to do a cric stick sometimes when on calls with my FD...Nope...only a State and NREMT-B so I can't.

I'll spell out more differences as time goes on.

Well, it's part way there

I figure I should go ahead and start one of my own. See what EMS 2.0 is doing to me? LOL

I am a Army combat medic, a volunteer firefighter/EMT, bus driver, and dad. I've written 2 books and working on a web/TV series based off those books. That's me in a nutshell.

For some odd ball reason, I decided I wanted to try to start doing a netcast...decided to take babysteps and do this first.

Where in the world did you come up with 1-U-801?

I came up with my blog title by using a combination of my FD Identfier according to IDPH (we're 1-U-52) and my unit (801 CSH) thus the 1-U-801

for those that follow me on twitter, I'm @ssgjbroyles