2010 Paulatim Magazine - RAAMC Association

Exercise LEMNOS
This year EX LEMNOS was held over the weekend 24-25 Oct at the
Murray Bridge Training Area (MUTA). The primary aim was to deploy a
surgical platoon (Role 2 (+) (enhanced) that exposed Clinical Coy
personnel to the current pattern of injuries that are encountered by
health personnel in Afghanistan. The secondary aim was to expose,
refresh and develop Clinical Coy personnel to the packing, loading,
unloading and setting up of a surgical platoon in the field environment.
Of the 18 personnel from Clinical Coy who attended, two were MO’s
from the Specialist Advisory Group, and 3 were medical assistants from
Health Coy 9 CSSB. The Role 2 (+) was well supported by five personnel
from Admin Coy.
In addition to a two bay resuscitation team, one bed theatre team, two
bed intensive care team, and four bed medium dependency unit team
Clinical Coy deployed an operations team and evacuation team.
EX LEMNOS involved a two tiered approach along the continuum of
care, which facilitated the medics at gaining experience at pre-hospital
care and transportation of casualties and handover procedures to a Role
2 (+) and subsequent on going interventions by Medical & NO’s and
CMA’s.
The concept of operations for the Role 2 (+) was to receive patients for
a 24 hour period commencing at 1200 hrs on 24 October. Over this
period staff were exposed to a total of 12 casualty scenarios. Patients
were collected from the nearby casualty clearing station by the
evacuation team and brought into the Role 2 (+) either into the
resuscitation bay or directly to the patient ward environment.
In line with the current pattern of injuries experienced by health
professionals in the Middle Eastern Area of Operations (MEAO), many
casualties presented to the Role 2 (+) as multiple presentations. The
casualties were experiencing a variety of conditions including gunshot
wounds, IED blasts, RPG blasts and snake bites. The multiple
presentations developed the medical officers ability to make sound
decisions on clinical management and how to effectively manage
demand particularly in times of surge.
The final casualty presentation to the resuscitation bay was based on a
local national family. This scenario exposed and developed the staff
members ability to care for the casualties within a cultural sensitive
environment. This was made more realistic with the casualties wearing
clothes similar to those worn by the local nationals in Afghanistan.
This was the fist time all scenarios had individual packages with clinical
information, photos and x rays. Each of the Directing Staff (DS) were
placed along the continuum of care and in affect “were reading off the
same page” The DS were able to feed clinical information into each
scenario and comment on how it really happened in their experience.
In conclusion all members involved in the exercising of the Role 2 (+)
enhanced felt this was a valuable opportunity to expose, refresh and
develop their knowledge of providing health care in a field setting.
The success of this exercise can be contributed to several members of
AUSMTF-4 who have recently returned from Afghanistan.
What made EX LEMNOS such a resounding success was the current
experiences of COL Thomas, MAJ Jongeneel & CAPT Wirth and the
additional work by MAJ Jongeneel of having each scenario in folders
for each of the DS and x rays on a laptop computer for the medical
officer and other members of the resuscitation team to view as needed.
The work done by WO2 Cox, SGT Bailes and SGT Callahan in preparing
the casualties and supervising the medics with pre-hospital care and
transportation allowed the medics to have several competencies signed
off through their exposure to a variety of experiences during the
exercise.
By: LTCOL K. Haas – (3 HSB)
PAULATIM
PA U L AT I M – M A GAZINE O F T HE R OYA L A U S T R A L I A N A R M Y M E DICAL C O R P S – 2 0 1 0 3 5