Posted : Saturday Aug 7, 2010
Marines will now get more in-depth training on treating battlefield casualties with an update to the Tactical Combat Casualty Course.
The revamp of the course’s curriculum will provide Marines with more information on keeping a casualty breathing, stemming blood loss and treating eye injuries.
The changes are summarized in the July 21 Marine administrative message 406/10, and are aimed at standardizing training, while going into a deeper level of detail in certain areas of casualty care.
As before, different levels of proficiency are expected and depend on the role Marines serve in their units. Most Marines will achieve a basic level, while others who are designated combat lifesavers will reach a higher proficiency level. Navy corpsmen will be expected to have the highest proficiency in the TCCC skills set and will continue to train Marines.
In addition to the switch to Combat Gauze as a clotting agent and the replacement of the TK-4 tourniquet with the CAT II tourniquet, the message also formally changes the term for casualty evacuation, or CASEVAC, to tactical evacuation, or TACEVAC.
Those and other changes outlined in the TCCC guidelines are derived from best practices and lessons learned downrange, which are reviewed and incorporated into training as close to real time as possible.
The course is broken down into three sections — care under fire, tactical field care and tactical evacuation care — and changes are reflected in each section.
