{"id":746,"date":"2012-03-08T21:00:52","date_gmt":"2012-03-09T02:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/?p=746"},"modified":"2014-05-04T17:52:41","modified_gmt":"2014-05-04T21:52:41","slug":"tactical-combat-casualty-care-training-for-police-officers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/?p=746","title":{"rendered":"Tactical Combat Casualty Care Training for Police Officers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(photo credit: National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians)<\/p><\/div>\n

Last week, I attended my department\u2019s annual forty-hour In-Service training block.\u00a0 The final day had instruction to which I had not been exposed in many years of police work:\u00a0 an introduction to Tactical Combat Casualty Care.<\/p>\n

What has always been in the trunk of the cop car?\u00a0 A first aid kit.\u00a0 What was it useful for?\u00a0 Not much really.\u00a0 Antiseptic, band-aids, and some Ibuprofen are far from helpful in a real live trauma emergency when rounds may be flying.<\/p>\n

The concept of TCCC (Tee-Triple-Cee) began with a 1996 paper that was published in Military Medicine.\u00a0 U.S. Special Operations Command ran with the ideas and methods and slowly began implementing TCCC in its units.\u00a0 It is now standard training in all branches of the Armed Forces.\u00a0 The goals of TCCC are 1) treat the casualty, 2) prevent additional casualties, and 3) complete the mission.<\/p>\n

Our baby steps into TCCC were taught by two of our fire-rescue department\u2019s paramedics, both of whom happen to be long-standing SWAT medics for our Tactical Team.\u00a0 Since medical runs are the bread and butter of most fire departments these days, our medics have a tremendous amount of practical experience treating the injured.<\/p>\n

The course of instruction was split into five hours of classroom and five hours of scenario-based training.\u00a0 I appreciated that the medics began with an overall look at diet and health for the officers, touching on such things as stress and heart disease.\u00a0 There was also a CPR and AED refresher.<\/p>\n

TCCC has three stages:\u00a0 Care Under Fire, Tactical Field Care, and Combat Casualty Evacuation Care.\u00a0 As a police officer or deputy sheriff on the street, we need to be concerned with Care Under Fire.\u00a0 The latter two stages will be dealt with when medics arrive to provide more competent medical services.<\/p>\n

That said, the Care Under Fire stage addresses mitigating the casualty\u2019s injury while maintaining security in a hostile situation.\u00a0 Military studies suggest that there are three types of injury that lead to what are called \u201cpreventable combat deaths.\u201d\u00a0 These are extremity hemorrhage, tension pneumothorax, and airway obstruction.\u00a0 Our class gave us basic instruction on field treatment in all three areas.<\/p>\n

As cops, we all have to have some knowledge of first responder medicine.\u00a0 TCCC, even in our very dumbed-down version, goes past Academy training to give hands-on life saving techniques with available tools.\u00a0 This must, unfortunately, be kept at the level of the lowest common denominator, which is often your barely interested partner.<\/p>\n

Nowadays, a police officer must master a bevy of skill sets from lawyer to soldier to counselor to politician, and maybe IT technician and daycare worker.\u00a0 At none of these things are most of us truly proficient.\u00a0 I have found that the KISS concept works best when teaching something new to a room full of cops.<\/p>\n

The SWAT medics, who have had the dubious pleasure of hanging around with us for years, did a great job of staying on topic for a few BLS techniques we may have to employ.\u00a0 We performed basic assessments, put Combat Application Tourniquets on ourselves and each other, covered sucking chest wounds, and were taught some buddy carry methods.<\/p>\n

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CAT tourniquet<\/p><\/div>\n

For the scenario-based training, we responded to several mock calls where we had to safely enter a hot area with a critical incident in progress and manage the scene and perhaps a casualty.<\/p>\n

It began with a single officer arriving at an officer down, moved to a pair of officers coming on scene at an officer assault, and ended with small groups of us handling a more complicated problem with multiple casualties and tactical clearing inside a residence.<\/p>\n

While walking back to the staging area after one scenario, a medic threw you a tourniquet and said, \u201cYou\u2019re shot in the arm.\u201d\u00a0 Oh.\u00a0 After you had properly applied your tourniquet to the affected limb with one hand, he said,\u00a0 \u201cDraw your gun.\u201d\u00a0 Hmmm, coincidently<\/em>, my dominant arm was now useless.\u00a0 Fortunately, we practice non-dominant-hand draws on the firing range.<\/p>\n

The officers did not know the scenarios in advance and their performances were critiqued afterward not only by the SWAT medics, but by Tactical Team members and other department trainers.\u00a0 In that way, the students received feedback on their medical treatment and tactics.<\/p>\n

I will admit that I hate scenario training, but this portion of the instruction was handled very well and did not disintegrate into some unrealistic paintball match with Simunitions.\u00a0 Kudos to the instructors.<\/p>\n

Budget constraints being what they are, only our SWAT members are currently issued CAT tourniquets and QuikClot.\u00a0 I heard some moaning from the guys about not having the PD provide these to line officers.\u00a0 In my cruiser\u2019s bailout vest, I have a SOF-T tourniquet and some QuikClot combat gauze, which I purchased myself.<\/p>\n

The two cost me less than sixty bucks; under a hundred dollars buys a more complete kit.\u00a0 But what is that worth compared to saving someone\u2019s life?\u00a0 Goodness knows some of the guys spend more than that on \u201ccool looking\u201d sunglasses to wear on duty.<\/p>\n

For those interested in learning more about TCCC from a law enforcement perspective, I recommend reading A Police Officer\u2019s Guide and Handbook to Tactical Casualty Care (Under Fire):\u00a0 First Aid and Self First Aid for Law Enforcement<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 It is written by a Florida sheriff\u2019s deputy, who is retired from 21 years of service in the U.S. Army.\u00a0 (disclaimer: I have no monetary interest in this book or its retailer, nor do I know the deputy, it just seems to have a good bead on the topic.)<\/p>\n

Our introductory course scratched the surface of TCCC concepts, but it better prepared us for a medical casualty in dangerous conditions.\u00a0 I think this is appropriate training at a time when lethal attacks on police officers have risen sharply.<\/p>\n

Randall<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, I attended my department\u2019s annual forty-hour In-Service training block.\u00a0 The final day had instruction to which I had not been exposed in many years of police work:\u00a0 an introduction to Tactical Combat Casualty Care. What has always been in the trunk of the cop car?\u00a0 A first aid kit.\u00a0 What was it useful for?\u00a0 Not much really.\u00a0 Antiseptic, band-aids, and some Ibuprofen are far from helpful in a real live trauma emergency when rounds may be flying. The concept of TCCC (Tee-Triple-Cee) began with a 1996 paper that was published in Military Medicine.\u00a0 U.S. Special Operations Command ran with the ideas and methods and slowly began implementing TCCC … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[795,4],"tags":[132,128,129,131,133,126,127,130],"class_list":["post-746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-medical","category-officer-safety","tag-cat-tourniquet","tag-emergency-medical","tag-law-enforcement","tag-quikclot","tag-sof-t-tourniquet","tag-tactical-combat-casualty-care","tag-tccc","tag-tourniquet"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p28xkp-c2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=746"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7642,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746\/revisions\/7642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}