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U.S. Navy sailors assigned to the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit participate in a Tactical Evacuation Course at Camp Lejeune, N.C., June 27, 2017. The course consisted of corpsmen identifying dummy casualties and assessing them for injuries ranging from gunshot wounds, amputations to severe trauma and treating them accordingly, followed by stabilizing and evacuating the casualty with an MV-22 Osprey.

Photo by Lance Cpl. Juan A. Soto-Delgado

Corpsmen Up! Sailor’s preparation for deployment

29 Jun 2017 | Lance Cpl. Juan A. Soto-Delgado The Official United States Marine Corps Public Website

U.S. Navy sailors assigned to the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit participated in a Tactical Evacuation Course at Camp Lejeune, N.C., June 27, 2017. The unit is in its preparation phases for deployment and requires corpsmen that are trained to support the air and ground combat elements to pass the course.

The course consisted of corpsmen identifying dummy casualties and assessing them for injuries ranging from gunshot wounds, amputations to severe trauma and treating them accordingly, followed by stabilizing and evacuating the casualty with an MV-22 Osprey.

“The purpose of this course is to get us [hospital corpsmen] use to evacuating casualties in case we find them in the field,” said Petty Officer 3rd Class Jennifer Knight. “We had a lot of practice for the last week and a half. Taking care of the casualty in the field wasn’t new, but doing it while flying was. I was really nervous about it, but once you get in [the osprey] it’s just second nature.”

Knight said the most difficult part of the course was communicating while on the Osprey. 

“You can’t hear anything at all,” said Knight. “So you have to use hand signals versus having to talk to your partner when treating the casualties.”

The Navy corpsmen are responsible for providing medical support to service members in both garrison and in combat. The corpsmen are trained in a variety of scenarios, from combat simulations to hospital assistance, training like the TacEvac course gives them a familiarity and realistic training of what they might deal with while deployed.

“We prepare [the corpsmen] as much as we can,” said Petty Officer 2nd Class William Jacobs, an instructor with Expeditionary Operations Training Group. “We evaluate them. We start them off in the classroom for a week and later on we move on to actual hands on care. We show them how to do intravenous injections, injuries, then we set-up scenarios for them so they can practice.”

Jacobs said the course does more than teach the corpsmen air evacuations; it also increases efficiency and interoperability between the two service branches and integrates the corpsmen with Marine aviation. This integration gives corpsmen a better understanding of how the ACE operates so they can better support them in future operations.

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