After checking-in and unloading and unpacking, I took the down-elevator and in the lobby ran-into Mike and Kiwi and Bill and Lucky Gunner’s rep Anthony Welsch, then Aaron showed-up and later Miles. They all piled into Anthony’s rental vehicle while I drove solo in the F-150, and we headed out to Reno Guns & Range for our Emergency Medical Range Training class.
The class was lead by a well-experienced former EMT and former Flight-EMT and former Reno motor officer and EMT Trainer and former multi-deployment overseas warrior-EMT – all just one guy named Derek.
He made an important distinction between the “Medical Kit” and its components of: a Compression bandage, wound Dressings, Hemostatic agents, and a Tourniquet – versus a “First-Aid Kit” with band-aids, tape, gauze and eye-wash, etc. for minor wound care.
From my recent RSO class I also appreciated his re-iteration of the need for assigning or designating different people to certain specific tasks when an emergency-event occurs — and the importance of a short Range Safety Briefing when training activities are taking place, where you identify the Medical Kit, put it in a convenient place, BY ITSELF, and show everyone the location of the Kit so they won’t be sprinting around the range like a chicken when something Unpleasantly Medical happens.
2.) To designate a medic person you grab someone and say, “You are the Medic!” From the Briefing you should have already identified this potential medic-person, and they are not the one having the accident.
3.) Designate a phone-caller you grab someone else and say, “You call 911!” AND have a ready-scripted dialog for the EMS dispatcher to respond-to, so they don’t send police first and cordon off the area before allowing the EMS van on-scene. Say: “We have had a training accident.” They ask, “What kind of training accident?” Say: “We have a person with a bullet injury…” Also that phone-person must have the coordinates or a good description of your location. ALSO FYI if a patient has a penetrating wound to the: Head, Neck, Chest, Abdomen – then they are UNSTABLE and it would be good to include that information.
4.) AND designate an escort-person, someone to go to the location-entrance, meet the EMS van, and guide them to the medical-site.
And there were some more designations I forget.
Following that he discussed (and we Q&A’d) about wound treatment itself, the order of priorities and application of care. FIRST you must protect yourself. You must have barrier safety-equipment: nitrile gloves and an air-way shield. Then the application of pressure to control bleeding. With gloves-on comes direct pressure, then a sterile DRESSING directly onto wound, then another dressing as necessary if bleeding continues, and then a pressure BANDAGE such as the “Israeli Bandage” that wraps the dressing IN PLACE and ALSO applies pressure – and if bleeding still continues, then the TOURNIQUET…
It was a really good class, and obviously I could take it again in order to remember everything better.
But enough for now.
Those are excellent classes, and if nothing else, give you another tool in the box. Hopefully one you’ll never have to use!
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