Cruel & Outdated Training Methods

[Lady's Human]

In med school, or an ER, you have two luxuries the military doesn't.....

Time and a controlled environment.

Once the soldier in question goes through the training, very likely the next time they have to put the skills into use is on a battlefield.....with no one else around, or with enough time to assist .....crappy conditions while you're trying to keep your buddy alive long enough to get to proper medical attention.

Again, though, this training method is NOT being used for every soldier in the military. As stated in the article, it's for soldiers who are not within range of normal medical support (medics, combat lifesavers, docs). That pretty much limits it to LRRP's (long range recon patrollers) and guys who wear funny green hats.

It's being discussed as though it's common practice throughout the military, when in fact it's a very small percentage who are using this training method.

[Grace]

In med school, or an ER, you have two luxuries the military doesn't.....

Time and a controlled environment.

Med school - probably. But the ER - that can turn on a dime, and you have no time and most certainly no control. 6 come in from an accident with only 2 empty beds. I've done it. And I never had a pig to practice my skills on.

I grant you battle field conditions are waaay different. But certainly one doesn't need to shoot pigs. Before these people are sent to the combat zone, they should have received at least a semblance of training in a big city ER. That would definitely prepare them. For goodness sakes, the article says the pigs are anesthetized. What possible good can that do - in combat they are going to be confronted with semi-comatose patients, maybe even some who are combative. The ER would love it if their patients came in asleep.

And if the military has the time for them to learn from a pig, then there certainly is enough time to send them to an ER.

Just another case of poor planning from the git-go.

[Lady's Human]

You're assuming one thing....

Time.

We normally take someone from a basic first aid level of training to combat lifesaver (Iv's, advanced stabilization, wound treatment beyond first aid) in about 5-10 days. Normally it's done in that timespan due to operational needs.


As far as the ER goes, if you find me an ER which will take non-medical specialty trained soldiers and let them into the ER for hands on treatment training, you're on. Somehow I sincerely doubt that either the general public or the insurance companies would ever let that happen.

[Grace]

You're assuming one thing....

Time.

We normally take someone from a basic first aid level of training to combat lifesaver (Iv's, advanced stabilization, wound treatment beyond first aid) in about 5-10 days. Normally it's done in that timespan due to operational needs.


As far as the ER goes, if you find me an ER which will take non-medical specialty trained soldiers and let them into the ER for hands on treatment training, you're on. Somehow I sincerely doubt that either the general public or the insurance companies would ever let that happen.

I'm not assuming anything. I'm not sure what you mean by that. As I stated in my previous post, poor planning from the beginning. And the pigs are the victims - this time.

What about putting them in one of the medical units in Iraq - or Afghanistan - or the hospital in Germany? But then they would be practicing on the poor servicemen and women who are injured - again the result of poor planning.

BTW - who is "we"?

[Lady's Human]

It's not poor planning, it's reality.

Medical skills are an add on to other skills. If I'm reading the original story correctly,these are most likely soldiers who are highly trained infantrymen (Lrsd, spec ops) who are learning emergency med care prior to deployment. NOT average soldiers.

Even in spec ops units, you have a fair amount of turnover. You need X number of trained CLS or other emergency med care specialists (normally around 20% of the soldiers in your units). One or more soldiers rotate to another unit, the skills have to be replaced, whether the incoming soldiers want to replace those skills or not.

You WANTED to go to med school. The soldiers are being told "Here's your new job....and you also have to learn emergency medical care in addition to your MOS"


As to "we", I'm recently retired, but I had to assist training CLS several times during my career, and trained soldiers throughout my career.

CLS doesn't involve shooting pigs, the class the article is referring to is an extremely small number of soldiers.

[Grace]

Back to the original point of this topic. It seems that the military uses pigs in other ways that could also be labeled animal cruelty.

Link to article.

It's not poor planning, it's reality.

No it was poor planning from the very beginning. Think May 1, 2003 - Mission Accomplished

[Lady's Human]

We're going to have to agree to disagree.

Poor planning for 200 years? Somehow I doubt that. TRADOC has it's issues, but they do have a pretty good idea about how to train soldiers.