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The Strike Report - September 2007
QUOTE OF THE MONTH:
Operator Aid
By guest writer Pam Bielecki Tactical and reality-based training exercises are critical for smooth operations and officer survival. Through the repetition training offers, officers train for proper execution during real events. Ongoing and consistent training allows officers to minimize decision-making processes and focus on the immediate threat in real scenarios. What is sometimes lacking in this training is the implementation of a medical protocol. While we are vigilant in practicing officer-down drills, we tend to ignore actual medical treatment that can be provided by officers - both to themselves and to their partners.
According to Dr. Alan Frankfurt, officers are rarely taught "adequate medical skills that will help them, a partner, an innocent bystander or hostage survive a violent encounter." Most officers are required to take CPR as part of their academy training. The American Heart Association teaches us that chances for survival after a heart attack are good if CPR is initiated within the first five minutes after collapse. As officers involved in tactical scenarios, we need to be aware that the chance for survival after a traumatic injury increases if medical aid is provided as soon as possible after the injury occurs. If a major artery suffers trauma, officers can die from arterial blood loss in less that one minute! When we look at a 1-minute life loss injury versus a 5-minute life loss injury, where would our training focus?
Officers must train to provide medical care! Even in urban environments, EMS response can take several minutes. Even then, unless the scene is secure, EMS providers will not be able to reach the injured officer as soon as they arrive. The minutes between injury and treatment are critical to officer survival. Colonel Nicholas Senn (1844-1908) said, "The fate of the wounded lays with those who apply the first dressing." He knew in the nineteenth century what has become critical for 21st century officer and soldier survival - medical training cannot be limited to standard medical care providers. Law enforcement officers must know how to identify and treat life-threatening injuries.
The three major causes of death that officers can prevent are bleeding, penetrating chest trauma, and airway compromise. According to Colonel Ron Bellamy, US Army, "If during the next war you could do only two things, put a tourniquet on and relieve a tension pneumothorax, then you can probably save between 70%-90% of all preventable deaths on the battlefield." As officers we may not see the numbers of injured that soldiers do in combat, but that does not mean we should be any less dedicated to our survival. We need to be committed to our survival.
Training to win means training to survive and our chances for survival increase if we have even minimal medical training.
Source References:
Tactical Medicine, Alan Frankfurt MD, September 2, 2004
Tactical Injury Care, P. Bielecki, D. Brady, B. Bonya, Dallas Police Department
Circulation, American Heart Association, http://circ.abajournals.org |
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