Sgt. 1st Class Victoria Saunders, left, senior NCO in charge, OB-GYN, Medical Department Activity, and Spc. Rebecca White, health care specialist, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 38th Infantry Regiment, 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, conduct tactical combat casualty care on a manikin at the Medical Simulation Training Center Oct. 26-28, 2015. (Photo by Staff Sgt. Craig Cantrell)
By Staff Sgt. Craig Cantrell
Garrison Public Affairs Office
Smoke billowed into the air as the sounds of small arms and indirect fire shattered the silence for a group of health care specialists training at the Fort Carson Medical Simulation Training Center (MSTC).
The sights and sounds intended to create a realistic combat experience transpired during a portion of a three-day Medical Education and Demonstration of Individual Competence course held at the MSTC Oct. 26-28 2015.
“The stressful environment the MSTC creates is an extremely realistic combat situation that you can’t simulate anywhere else because it’s dark, strobe lights are going off with gunfire in the background and you have to react appropriately,” said Sgt. 1st Class Taylor Le Blanc, platoon sergeant, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, Warrior Transition Battalion.
Le Blanc, a health care specialist by trade, is not currently in a position where he administers medical treatment to patients but reinforced the fact that he could be called back to a line company at any time and have to provide care to combat casualties.
Regardless of job placement, all health care specialists are required to maintain a national registry emergency medical technician (EMT) certification and take a 72-hour refresher course every two years.
“This training reinforced medical skills that we should maintain but it’s not like riding a bike, you do forget steps and nuances of adequate treatment for your patients that could put their life in danger, so it is very important to receive this training,” said Le Blanc.
The training center staff used the crawl, walk, run method of teaching to assess the students before steadily accelerating the pace of training.
“First we conducted the didactic portion in the classroom where we dictated the standards to the students before moving into the practical portion where they executed an EMT-based scenario exercise utilizing Tactical Combat Casualty Care that focuses on trauma training,” said Staff Sgt. Antonio Zavala, NCO in charge, MSTC.
The training center delivers effective medical training with a standardized training platform for both classroom and simulated battlefield conditions.
“We utilize a STX (situational training exercise) lane where we incorporate the lessons taught in the classroom into a simulated combat environment with casualties and force the students to use critical thinking skills so they learn why they are performing a task, not just how to perform,” said Timothy Olsen, MSTC site lead.
The training center offers a variety of courses from EMT Refresher, Medical Education and Demonstration of Individual Competence, International Trauma Life Support, Basic Life Support/Instructor and U.S. Army Flight Paramedic Sustainment Program to Combat Lifesaver Training.
“The MSTC program supports training for medical and nonmedical personnel and can train 2,500-3,000 Soldiers annually,” said Olsen.
During the courses students receive training on state-of-the-art manikins that send real-time responses to instructors monitoring the training aids.
“The responsive manikins we use can bleed, breathe, sweat, cry and give a lot of physical feedback to personnel performing treatment to let them know if they are performing correctly,” said David Lee, course developer and instructor, MSTC.
Students received immediate feedback from the instructors via the manikins on their performance during the Tactical Combat Casualty Care portion of the course.
“If students apply the correct amount of digital pressure to an extremity, that extremity, will stop bleeding and if they pack a wound correctly the manikin will recognize the back pressure and stop bleeding, all of which is judged by the manikin not the operator so they receive instantaneous feedback during the exercise,” he said Lee.
Units interested in conducting training at the MSTC can contact the staff at 526-2820 or go online at http://www.carson.army.mil/mstc/index/html.