Traffic control and Doctors

This week was mass casualties week. Instead of working with one injury or multiple injuries by ourselves, we learned how to work in teams (2 medics, radio man and a doctor) to treat multiple injuries in the field. The way it works is that first: all the injured people got into a semicircle. The medics would then split up, one staying with the doctor and going to one side, and the other medic would start at the other side. Together they would stop any big wound that would cause the injured to die from blood loss. Then the doctor would tell the radio man who had what injury and who would have to be worked on first. The radio man would then call into the central command and tell them about the injuries and that help was needed to evac the injured.

While the radio man was doing that, the doctor and the medics would start surgery on the injured. The whole process takes maybe 20-30 min and you can have more than one team working at once. The rules that come into play, when there is more than one team are that the first one on the scene is the ones in charge. By the end of the week, we were doing training exercise with four teams. That means 4 doctors, 4 radio men and 8-12 medics on one scene with 10 injuries.

Another thing we did this week was be traffic officers. This week was the 10th anniversary of the Harap. The Harap is the army medical clinic. Each course had to send 4-5 people to go and either be security or traffic control and help people park their cars. It was a very nice ceremony and by being there, I got a chance to meet many high up officials who are in charge of the medical branch in the army. Also, there were demonstrations of all the new medical technique that are going on in the country.

Finally, the last thing we did before we got to leave this week was opening up multiple veins on one person. Up until now, we have only opened up one vain per person. On Thursday however, we got a chance to open up 3 veins on one person.

Some other high lights for the week:

It finally rained here in Israel. It even hailed in some areas :)