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Tac-med l.l.c |
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Serving those who protect us... |
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Background |
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LESSONS LEARNED
The past decade has shown an increasing emergence of violence requiring advanced tactical interventions. Increases in school shooting incidents, active shooters, and drug and clandestine lab incidents have increased the need for organized tactical operations. With each of these activities comes unique, but predictable injury risks, however the standard civilian EMS approach to treating these injuries cannot be followed in the “tactical context.”
Prior to 1996, the standard approach to traumatic injury care was based on the guidelines established by Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS). These treatment tenets were applied during police and military operations. In 1993, during Urban Operations in Mogadishu, numerous US Soldiers of the elite US Army Rangers sustained multiple combat injuries during complex emergency operations in that area. From that incident was borne the Committee for Tactical Casualty Care. The committee composed of providers of all levels, military and civilian who reviewed the prior ATLS guidelines and took an epidemiological look at the injuries sustained in Mogadishu and developed a scientific approach to tactical casualty management. The committee concluded that the ATLS approach was not applicable to the management of pre-hospital, tactical casualties, military or civilian.
Shortly after, the first set of tactical care guidelines were established. These guidelines are known as Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TC3) guidelines which are reviewed and updated periodically by the committee. These are the standards of care for the provision of tactical trauma care. These standards focus on decision making and early intervention under austere conditions.
Currently, there are numerous tactical operational teams functioning in the U.S. both in major cities and surrounding areas. For the most part, many of the medical personnel assigned are either EMS cross-trained career police officers, or are traditional EMTs and paramedics that take an inactive “stand-by” role for medical support. In most cases, these personnel desire a forum to “bridge the gap” between their professions where they can share “common ground” specifically when it comes to tactical casualty care.
The goal of these programs is to “bridge the gap” and establish standardization of protocol and practice, borne from injury science and real-time epidemiology. All reference materials used are properly credited (to the authors) and distributed to attendees of these courses because of the science from which they were derived.. |
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130 West Main Street Suite 144, Box 316 Collegeville, PA 19426 |
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Phone: 610-551-2400
E-mail: Information@Tac-Med.org |
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-Journal of Special Operations Medicine, Fall 2001 |
