Army Medics Train at Miami Trauma Center
October 27th, 2007Via: AP:
For two weeks, 28 Army medics, nurses, doctors and nurse anesthetists have been learning trauma medicine and teamwork under pressure at the Ryder Trauma Center at downtown Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital, a place that sees such carnage it often resembles a war zone.
Ryder is one of the busiest trauma centers in the nation, seeing an average of 11 trauma patients a day — about as many as the biggest military hospital in Iraq.
Jackson Memorial serves some of the city’s most crime-ridden sections, and patients arriving at the trauma center have been stabbed, injured in grisly auto accidents, wounded in shootouts with high-powered assault weapons, or hurt in falls and fights.
The Army sends 10 forward surgical teams a year through Ryder, which was selected six years ago because of the volume of bloodshed. It is the Army’s only trauma training center. The Air Force has similar programs in Baltimore, St. Louis and Cincinnati; the Navy’s trauma program is in Los Angeles.
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This team’s live-action day turned out to be relatively quiet, with just a trickle of stabbing, motorcycle crash and car accident victims arriving. Just a week earlier, four police officers shot with high-powered assault weapons had been rushed to Ryder.
One died and two suffered easily treatable wounds, but one had her knee blown apart and required extensive treatment by Ryder’s nonmilitary staff.
“That one cop, she was shot by an AK-47,” said Spc. Joshua McCann, a 22-year-old medic and Kent State nursing student. “That’s exactly what we’re going to see over there.”
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An inverted version of this system has been operating for years in the San Antonio area, which has two of the largest hospitals in the Defense Department. Both Wilford Hall (USAF) and Brooke Army Medical Centers perform much of the trauma care in San Antonio. Due to a recent consolidation, Brooke Army will soon be doing all enlisted medic training for both the Army and Air Force.
MW