High-Tech Mannequins in Fla. Assist Servicemen in Medical Training Exercise
Oct. 15--When the airmen entered there was a mangled foot in a boot and a severed leg.
One of the injured yelled out.
The other struggled to breathe; his leg, now without a foot, shot up and down in spasms, slinging blood.
This time, thankfully, the injured were not real.
They were high-tech mannequins in a state-of-the-art medical training facility at Hurlburt Field designed to simulate the stress and challenge of administering medical care in combat.
It still made for a startlingly gruesome sight.
Wednesday's exercise mocked an improvised bomb explosion followed with a machine-gun attack, one of the most common scenarios used to injure U.S. soldiers in combat. The mannequins' simulated injuries included lost limbs and shrapnel and bullet wounds. One had a piece of rebar lodged in his thigh.
"This gives the airmen realism and desensitizes them, so if they see a real person with an amputated leg they are less traumatized by it," said Paul McCarthy, one of the instructors at the Tactical Operations Medical Skills lab.
Before the exercise started, he and John Frentress, the lab's director, both former combat medics themselves, went around the room with vats of stage blood, filling plastic containers and tubes. The blood bucket pumped the thick, red liquid into the mannequins. Frentress tested out the remote control, getting his mannequin to move, breathe, and make sounds.
The mannequins are much more useful in training than say, a human painted with blood, or a simple plastic doll that doesn't move or respond to treatment, McCarthy said.
In the lab, instructors can also kick up the air conditioning or heater to create extremely hot or cold situations. They do a lot of training in the dark with the disconcerting sound of a helicopter swooping overhead, firing its guns at nearby targets on the ground.
The facility is used to train airmen with no medical background, like those going through the course on Wednesday, but is also used for advanced medics, brushing up on skills or taking refresher courses before they deploy.
About 900 students of all skill levels go through the lab each year, some on first-time medical training, others brushing up on skills before they deploy.
On Wednesday, Tech Sgt. Tamara Stevenson, who is stationed at Duke Field, came in the room and immediately stooped to the mannequin whose severed leg lay a few feet away, already purple.
Stevenson struggled to apply a tourniquet.
The 40-year-old's only prior training on the skill was watching a video in a classroom. Now, she was crouched over a lifelike body.
"It's not working," she said as she fumbled with the strap.
Blood squirted farther. The mannequin started yelling.
"Tighten it up," McCarthy said. "You've got to get to that other leg or you are going to lose him."
He noted first-time students often don't understand just how tight they have to secure the tourniquet to actually stop the bleeding. The rarely make the mistake again.
The other mannequin, whose eyes were rolled back in his head, had an injury near his groin that had severed the femoral artery. Blood gurgled out while an airman packed gauze into the wound.
After the patients were stabilized, the airmen loaded them and their severed limbs -- "a lot of people don't think about that, but we can't go leaving body parts behind," McCarthy said -- into the back of a simulated helicopter.
The airmen, who were not trained medics, agreed the course had been unnerving, much different than their classroom instruction, but that it was an invaluable experience.
"When you walk in, your adrenaline is definitely pumping," Stevenson said. "You know you are coming in to someone being hurt and you are trying to save their life. In reality it would be someone you know. I want to be prepared for that."
Contact Daily News Staff Writer Lauren Sage Reinlie at 850-315-4443 or lreinlie@nwfdailynews.com. Follow her on Twitter @LaurenRnwfdn.
Copyright 2014 - Northwest Florida Daily News, Fort Walton Beach
