KeithD
02-27-12, 17:35
SIG Academy's “Bullets and Bandages” AAR
Class: Sig Academies “Bullets and Bandages”
Instructors: Kerry Davis and Tim Arnold
Location: Post 46 Hunt and Fish club, Pinckney Michigan
Reason:
To build on the basic medical knowledge I already had. Through the DOC I’ve learned basic first aid, CPR, and had training in the use of an AED. I always felt less then adequately prepared should I come across a Medical emergency. While on the range, at home, vehicle accidents ect I wanted to be more prepared to help save a life or my own should the situation arise.
Expectations:
Reading other students AAR’s from previous B&B classes and talking to Kerry, I had a pretty good idea of what was going to be covered. I expected a lot of lecture the first few days. I figured my hand would be hurting from taking 2 days worth of notes.
The types of medical situations that I excepted to cover were, gun shot wounds, abrasions, punctures, and weather related injuries.
The range portion of the class is what I really didn’t have a clue on what we would be doing.
TD1:
Class started with the usual student and staff introduction. We had a good mix of firearms trainers, emt’s, and serious students. There were many familiar faces in the class.
The first thing that impressed me was the entire power point presentation was given to us in a binder. This was key for me to listen and retain information. I have been in many classes that required you to take notes. The problem with this is that while your busy writing your also busy missing the things the instructor was saying. Even better it gave all the students the ability to refresh and re read the course material later on.
The first are covered was the legality of rendering aid in our state and the mental side of medical operations. Mission first was stressed from the beginning. Whether taking a Taliban strong hold or defending your home from an intruder, the threat or “mission” comes firsts. Once you are able to that is when the medical care comes in. No matter how bad we want to stop and render aid to a loved one, if the BG is still shooting at us we need to deal with that first. Along with that is the warrior mindset to never give up. Just like fighting whith a gun, not giving up is the key to survival.
From there we moved into body alarm responses. We talked about what our body does under stress, both ours and the victim we are working on. Most people are failure with these as they are pretty much the same with any high stress high adrenaline situation.
One of my highest anticipated topics…med kits. I was looking forward to this. There are literally millions of different kits with all kinds of items in them. It was nice to get a highly educated opinion from someone that has been there done that. Kerry saying “simplicity under stress” would come to a new light on day three of live fire. First Kerry talked about access to the kit. You should have be able to get to the kit with either hand very quickly. Just how quickly would be demonstrated later in the class. Items that Kerry recommended to create a small yet highly effective kit were Israeli bandage, OLAES bandage, packing gauze, ABD pad, ACE type compression bandage, sheers, sharpie and some tape.
Next we moved in to the use of bandages and hemostatic agents. This was very interesting as I have heard very conflicting stories about burns and clots with this stuff. Kerry explained how the older quick clot was made out of ZEOLITE and would cause burns to the wound. Stan had a package of the old stuff (black stripe across the package) pour into water…it would boil. Not good in a wound. The newer quick clot that is Kaolin based does not have this problem. We were shown different agents such as “granule” types made to be poured into the wound then packed, to combat gauze with the hemostatic agent built in.
Tourniquets will cause almost as much controversy as the dreaded SERPA debate. Some people say that it will cause long lasting an irreversible tissue damage if left on more than a few min…this has been proved false. The use of a tourniquet has been upgraded from a last resort to first resort in situations of a life threatening bleed. Kerry had lots of up to date information from around the world. All of the cases showed that there was no long term tissue damage or effects with a tourniquet applied for up to 4 hours. There are even cases of people going much longer with no ill effects.
Then the video that sunk in the time frames for many people. Kerry showed us a video of I believe a Pakistani man that was shot in the leg from a high caliber rifle. Immediately you could see that it was a femoral hit. From the time the man was shot to when he well over and was not able to render care to himself… less than 20 seconds. The video was graphic but I can think of no better way to show how much time you don’t have to save yourself is you or someone else has a life threatening bleed.
Types of tourniquets that we had a chance to see were the CAT, SOF,SWAT-T, and NATO. Along with being showed how to make tourniquet out of every day things. The CAT and SOF were the same basic designs with some huge differences that would come to light later. The Swat was basically a long stretch of rubber like you use in physical therapy. And the NATO was something strait out of an S&M shop. The one that stood out to me was the SWAT-T. it is a very versatile tourniquet and can be used for many other things in a pinch.
The next part of the lecture was going over the 3 body systems, how they operate and how they can be effected. Further more how a problem with one of them will eventually effect them all. This was laid out with the layman in mind. There was not a bunch of big medical words people like me wouldn’t understand.
TD2:
This is where we really started to learn how to treat specific injuries. There is WAY to much information to spell it all out. Some of the thing we learned were:
Gunshot wounds, how to identify the bleed and stop it using a tourniquet, hemostatic agent and how to pack and wrap the wound.
Lacerations from small direct pressure and wraps to bad bleeds.
Puncture wounds.
Avulsions
Abrasions
Environment injuries including weather related, animal related ect.
Burns
Amputation injuries
Blast injuries
Fractures
Flail chest injuries
Sucking chest wounds
Tension pneumothorax
Facial injuries obstructing airway.
Eviscerations
Shock
Moving the victim
As you can see there was a huge amount of information covered. Kerry did a fantastic job of balancing power point, lecture, videos pictures and personal experiences to ensure the information was given and retained. At no point in the class did I feel overwhelmed with information. But was very surprised at how much I understood and retained. Especially not coming from any kind of medical back ground.
About mid TD2 the lecture was done and we moved on to practical exercises. Kerry and Tim set up different stations. First was the tourniquets. Students had a chance to practice with all the different kinds, seeing the pros and cons of each.I for one had my mind made up on the best one, the one I had been carrying for years. Three other stations were pig quarters that they had shot with different calibers including, 12 slug, 5.56, and 9mm. Each student could see what kind of wound was created and practice packing it. This was great to have the hands on practice to actually packing a wound.
TD3: Bringing it all together.
This was the live fire range exercise day. Both Kerry and Tim stressed that this was a Medical class with some shooting not a shooting class with some medical. The point of the range was not to make you a better shooter but to apply the techniques taught under stress.
We started out working with the pistol. We did some basic warm up exercises and moved into shooting one handed. Once everyone was warmed up and had any gear issues worked out we moved in to the medical exercises. We would start shooting the drill, at some point Tim would blow the whistle signaling that one of our arms would take a hit. We would then fight our way behind cover and attempt to apply the tourniquet… in under 20 seconds, under stress, with clothing and gear on. This proved to be much harder than in side with a t shirt on and no stress. We ran through multiple strings of this trying multiple different kinds of tourniquets.
After lunch we moved to the carbine doing pretty much the same drills. After those were complete we moved on to the team aspects extracting a wounded victim. We worked in teams of 4, 2 people were designated for suppressive fire and 2 were designated for extraction and care. The 4 would move forward to the victim, while suppressive fire was being laid out the other two would make contact with the wounded and drag them to safety. The 2 that were laying suppressive fire would move with them to cover and continue suppressing the threat. Mean while one of the medics would provide rear security while the medic applied a tourniquet to the femoral bleed of the wounded.
For many shooters this was a first of doing most of this. You could see the adrenaline flowing. Added in to some great performances of the victims it really laid on the stress.
What I learned:
Pretty much all parts of this class was new to me. All of the information was great and I feel 100 percent more confident to handle myself in the types of medical emergencies that we covered.
The number one thing that I learned that I thought I knew was my choice in tourniquets. I’ve carried the SOF t for years. For a tourniquet being applied to someone else, it does well. Applying it to yourself sucks. Under stress securing the windlass is sometimes very hard to do. Also depending on the generation the strap can get bound up in the buckle and cause some problems.
Your immediate kit should always be accessible and simple. This is where Kerry’s kit from Dark Angel Medical shines. Its very small, compact, easy to use, but yer still is packed with very vital useful tools to save your or someone else’s life.
Conclusion:
This is a class EVERYONE should take. We are all a million times more likely to use this information than using our gun. With all the things covered I would be willing to say that you WILL use at least one thing learned from this class in your life time.
Just like anything it takes time and practice. We should all be practicing this stuff just as much as we spend time practicing our weapons manipulations. You owe it to yourself and to those you love to take this class.
I would like to thank Kerry Davis and Tim Arnold from Sig Academy for coming out. A big thank you to all the students in attendance, without you this wouldn’t have happened. Post 46 and Steve Fisher for the use of the club. Brad Van Valkenburg for all the help. Dave Shepard for taking some pics. And Barb Stockford for the chili, very awesome to warm up to during a cold day at the range.
Videos and Pictures will be posted soon
Class: Sig Academies “Bullets and Bandages”
Instructors: Kerry Davis and Tim Arnold
Location: Post 46 Hunt and Fish club, Pinckney Michigan
Reason:
To build on the basic medical knowledge I already had. Through the DOC I’ve learned basic first aid, CPR, and had training in the use of an AED. I always felt less then adequately prepared should I come across a Medical emergency. While on the range, at home, vehicle accidents ect I wanted to be more prepared to help save a life or my own should the situation arise.
Expectations:
Reading other students AAR’s from previous B&B classes and talking to Kerry, I had a pretty good idea of what was going to be covered. I expected a lot of lecture the first few days. I figured my hand would be hurting from taking 2 days worth of notes.
The types of medical situations that I excepted to cover were, gun shot wounds, abrasions, punctures, and weather related injuries.
The range portion of the class is what I really didn’t have a clue on what we would be doing.
TD1:
Class started with the usual student and staff introduction. We had a good mix of firearms trainers, emt’s, and serious students. There were many familiar faces in the class.
The first thing that impressed me was the entire power point presentation was given to us in a binder. This was key for me to listen and retain information. I have been in many classes that required you to take notes. The problem with this is that while your busy writing your also busy missing the things the instructor was saying. Even better it gave all the students the ability to refresh and re read the course material later on.
The first are covered was the legality of rendering aid in our state and the mental side of medical operations. Mission first was stressed from the beginning. Whether taking a Taliban strong hold or defending your home from an intruder, the threat or “mission” comes firsts. Once you are able to that is when the medical care comes in. No matter how bad we want to stop and render aid to a loved one, if the BG is still shooting at us we need to deal with that first. Along with that is the warrior mindset to never give up. Just like fighting whith a gun, not giving up is the key to survival.
From there we moved into body alarm responses. We talked about what our body does under stress, both ours and the victim we are working on. Most people are failure with these as they are pretty much the same with any high stress high adrenaline situation.
One of my highest anticipated topics…med kits. I was looking forward to this. There are literally millions of different kits with all kinds of items in them. It was nice to get a highly educated opinion from someone that has been there done that. Kerry saying “simplicity under stress” would come to a new light on day three of live fire. First Kerry talked about access to the kit. You should have be able to get to the kit with either hand very quickly. Just how quickly would be demonstrated later in the class. Items that Kerry recommended to create a small yet highly effective kit were Israeli bandage, OLAES bandage, packing gauze, ABD pad, ACE type compression bandage, sheers, sharpie and some tape.
Next we moved in to the use of bandages and hemostatic agents. This was very interesting as I have heard very conflicting stories about burns and clots with this stuff. Kerry explained how the older quick clot was made out of ZEOLITE and would cause burns to the wound. Stan had a package of the old stuff (black stripe across the package) pour into water…it would boil. Not good in a wound. The newer quick clot that is Kaolin based does not have this problem. We were shown different agents such as “granule” types made to be poured into the wound then packed, to combat gauze with the hemostatic agent built in.
Tourniquets will cause almost as much controversy as the dreaded SERPA debate. Some people say that it will cause long lasting an irreversible tissue damage if left on more than a few min…this has been proved false. The use of a tourniquet has been upgraded from a last resort to first resort in situations of a life threatening bleed. Kerry had lots of up to date information from around the world. All of the cases showed that there was no long term tissue damage or effects with a tourniquet applied for up to 4 hours. There are even cases of people going much longer with no ill effects.
Then the video that sunk in the time frames for many people. Kerry showed us a video of I believe a Pakistani man that was shot in the leg from a high caliber rifle. Immediately you could see that it was a femoral hit. From the time the man was shot to when he well over and was not able to render care to himself… less than 20 seconds. The video was graphic but I can think of no better way to show how much time you don’t have to save yourself is you or someone else has a life threatening bleed.
Types of tourniquets that we had a chance to see were the CAT, SOF,SWAT-T, and NATO. Along with being showed how to make tourniquet out of every day things. The CAT and SOF were the same basic designs with some huge differences that would come to light later. The Swat was basically a long stretch of rubber like you use in physical therapy. And the NATO was something strait out of an S&M shop. The one that stood out to me was the SWAT-T. it is a very versatile tourniquet and can be used for many other things in a pinch.
The next part of the lecture was going over the 3 body systems, how they operate and how they can be effected. Further more how a problem with one of them will eventually effect them all. This was laid out with the layman in mind. There was not a bunch of big medical words people like me wouldn’t understand.
TD2:
This is where we really started to learn how to treat specific injuries. There is WAY to much information to spell it all out. Some of the thing we learned were:
Gunshot wounds, how to identify the bleed and stop it using a tourniquet, hemostatic agent and how to pack and wrap the wound.
Lacerations from small direct pressure and wraps to bad bleeds.
Puncture wounds.
Avulsions
Abrasions
Environment injuries including weather related, animal related ect.
Burns
Amputation injuries
Blast injuries
Fractures
Flail chest injuries
Sucking chest wounds
Tension pneumothorax
Facial injuries obstructing airway.
Eviscerations
Shock
Moving the victim
As you can see there was a huge amount of information covered. Kerry did a fantastic job of balancing power point, lecture, videos pictures and personal experiences to ensure the information was given and retained. At no point in the class did I feel overwhelmed with information. But was very surprised at how much I understood and retained. Especially not coming from any kind of medical back ground.
About mid TD2 the lecture was done and we moved on to practical exercises. Kerry and Tim set up different stations. First was the tourniquets. Students had a chance to practice with all the different kinds, seeing the pros and cons of each.I for one had my mind made up on the best one, the one I had been carrying for years. Three other stations were pig quarters that they had shot with different calibers including, 12 slug, 5.56, and 9mm. Each student could see what kind of wound was created and practice packing it. This was great to have the hands on practice to actually packing a wound.
TD3: Bringing it all together.
This was the live fire range exercise day. Both Kerry and Tim stressed that this was a Medical class with some shooting not a shooting class with some medical. The point of the range was not to make you a better shooter but to apply the techniques taught under stress.
We started out working with the pistol. We did some basic warm up exercises and moved into shooting one handed. Once everyone was warmed up and had any gear issues worked out we moved in to the medical exercises. We would start shooting the drill, at some point Tim would blow the whistle signaling that one of our arms would take a hit. We would then fight our way behind cover and attempt to apply the tourniquet… in under 20 seconds, under stress, with clothing and gear on. This proved to be much harder than in side with a t shirt on and no stress. We ran through multiple strings of this trying multiple different kinds of tourniquets.
After lunch we moved to the carbine doing pretty much the same drills. After those were complete we moved on to the team aspects extracting a wounded victim. We worked in teams of 4, 2 people were designated for suppressive fire and 2 were designated for extraction and care. The 4 would move forward to the victim, while suppressive fire was being laid out the other two would make contact with the wounded and drag them to safety. The 2 that were laying suppressive fire would move with them to cover and continue suppressing the threat. Mean while one of the medics would provide rear security while the medic applied a tourniquet to the femoral bleed of the wounded.
For many shooters this was a first of doing most of this. You could see the adrenaline flowing. Added in to some great performances of the victims it really laid on the stress.
What I learned:
Pretty much all parts of this class was new to me. All of the information was great and I feel 100 percent more confident to handle myself in the types of medical emergencies that we covered.
The number one thing that I learned that I thought I knew was my choice in tourniquets. I’ve carried the SOF t for years. For a tourniquet being applied to someone else, it does well. Applying it to yourself sucks. Under stress securing the windlass is sometimes very hard to do. Also depending on the generation the strap can get bound up in the buckle and cause some problems.
Your immediate kit should always be accessible and simple. This is where Kerry’s kit from Dark Angel Medical shines. Its very small, compact, easy to use, but yer still is packed with very vital useful tools to save your or someone else’s life.
Conclusion:
This is a class EVERYONE should take. We are all a million times more likely to use this information than using our gun. With all the things covered I would be willing to say that you WILL use at least one thing learned from this class in your life time.
Just like anything it takes time and practice. We should all be practicing this stuff just as much as we spend time practicing our weapons manipulations. You owe it to yourself and to those you love to take this class.
I would like to thank Kerry Davis and Tim Arnold from Sig Academy for coming out. A big thank you to all the students in attendance, without you this wouldn’t have happened. Post 46 and Steve Fisher for the use of the club. Brad Van Valkenburg for all the help. Dave Shepard for taking some pics. And Barb Stockford for the chili, very awesome to warm up to during a cold day at the range.
Videos and Pictures will be posted soon