MASCAL Exercise

It is the weekend. I spent the majority of my day off at work observing medical skills. Not much of a day off, considering I woke up at 0400 to do this.

But what was this really disrupting? What kind of personal life do I really have? I probably would have just sun bathed and watched Ancient Aliens all day....

So, the work I did was an MFO wide training event. It tested the reaction times and protocols of a lot of different contingents and agencies at North Camp and the surrounding remote sites. I convoyed to the remote site where the event took place. The event was a VBIED and a secondary IED blast. One of my Medics and I moulaged all the casualties and observed the medical skills of the Civilian Observer Unit and the Fijians.

As always, I saw some really crazy medical care. But not from the Fijians. I've taught enough classes to them over the past few months for them to basically be first responder rockstars. The civilians were a bit scarier today. Like, asking for permission to put a tourniquet on someone to stop their massive hemorrhage before helping them. What? Luckily, I conveniently have a CLS class scheduled for them this upcoming week.

 

Scary pressure dressings over non-splinted compound fractures.

 

This training event was high speed enough to involve the Aviation Company so we had real air MEDEVAC to request. We also used ground MEDEVAC. Some of my Medics drove an ambulance out to the remote site in a convoy to evacuate some casualties back to the dispensary for the rest of the clinic to receive. It was cool to get everyone involved.

 

MEDEVAC bird kicking up all kinds of sand.

 

The public affairs guys went out to the remote site with us to document the training exercise in film and photos. They interviewed me about the importance of good medical training, realistic looking moulage and my job as the senior CLS trainer. It was pretty cool. Maybe I'll be famous on a crappy AFN commercial someday. Haha.

 

I've been a CLS training fool since I arrived at the MFO, and my schedule for July absolutely does not let up. I'm in high demand and my Medics are in high demand; that's a great thing. Even if it reinforces my entire lack of a personal life.