AAR: 88 Tactical LE TacMed Instructor - Omaha, NE - October 2016

88 Tactical - LE TacMed Instructor Course

Who (Instructor): S. Whittington of 88 Tactical. See 88 Tactical’s website for complete bio.
What (Course): Law Enforcement Tactical Medic Instructor
When: October 4-5, 2016
Where: Douglas County Sheriff’s Office - Omaha, NE
Why: Individual and Instructor Development

Course Overview: This course is designed to help Law Enforcement Agencies design, implement and teach their Officers and Deputies Tactical Medicine and fighting while wounded techniques.

Students: 15 total, 14 males, 1 female.

Backgrounds: 9 Law Enforcement Officers and 6 Tactical Medics (all Paramedic certified). A large majority of the group (LE) had a medical background with several EMT-Paramedics and EMT's included.

Firearms - Glocks. No issues to report in regards to firearms malfunctions, ETC.

Kit - Roughly 2/3 of the students completed the course in some array of body armor / plates. No issues to report in regards to equipment issues, ETC.

Weather - Picture perfect range training day on TD2 with temps in the high 60's to low 70's, with sunny skies and low winds.

Training Day #1 - TD1 was focused on medical skills for Law Enforcement, specifically rapid recognition and treatment of life threatening injuries to include massive bleeding, chest injuries (tension pneumothorax) and airway trauma. In addition to the previously mentioned topics, we also covered carries, drags and other extrication / evacuation considerations for LE. Both the Recognition / Treatment and Evacuation blocks contained lecture and hands on modules. All of the content covered was supported by TECC. The course was arranged with the core curriculum covered in the morning block and teach backs in the afternoon. We concluded TD1 with a written test, a passing score was required to pass the course.

Training Day #2 - TD2 was focused on presentation and manipulation of pistols with simulated injuries, specifically presenting from the holster, reloads, and malfunctions with primary hand only and support hand only. The goal of the range portion was to identify safe ways to get and keep your pistol in the fight regardless of the injuries that would cause an officer to have to use his pistol with one hand or from the ground. Just as in TD1, TD2 covered the core curriculum in the morning block, with teach backs taking place in the afternoon. We concluded TD2 with a comprehensive practical examination drill that entailed movement, presentation of our pistol with a malfunction and a reload all with our primary hand only. The examination drill was shot at 5 yards on a 4X6 piece of paper; there was a time limit of 30 seconds and there were multiple pass/fail tasks that had to be completed to pass the drill. The majority of the students had what I would consider an "advanced" level of firearms skills and passed the practical exam the first time. There were two students that took the exam several times before passing.

Summary - This was a very well thought out, organized and instructed course that is extremely relevant to what I have seen within the LE community as far as medical and shooting needs. The medical block was Law Enforcement focused, yet did not get to far into the details where it could be construed as being over a non-medical professionals head. The shooting block was challenging from start to finish, yet organized so that the students were able to get quality repetitions throughout the day in an effort to help them to understand movement, presentation and manipulations from multiple injured perspectives.

V/r - Rob

When you have a sec, can you add some info on the following?

• Listed as an instructor course, can you add more thoughts on how students were prepared to redeliver the information?
• How much class time was lecture vs hands-on?
• How much powerpoint?
• Were visual aids locally produced, NAEMT TCCC/TECC material, mil, other?
• How were supplies used/distributed in the class for practice? Individual kits, group gear, skill stations?
• Were you able to open original dressing/bandage/kit packaging during practice and drills? If not every time, at least a few?
• Any use of moulage, tissue simulants, limb sections, mannequins? Wet or dry?
• Were different types of dressings, packaging, TQs, extraction devices and adjuncts discussed and differentiated?
• Made available to you for hands-on practice?
• The students in your class had credible LE and/or med background. How little could a prospective student come in off the street with and successfully complete the course?

This class came up on my radar and I have been considering a road trip. Feel free to add anything that could be helpful I didn't ask for.

Great questions, here ya go...

1Q - Listed as an instructor course, can you add more thoughts on how students were prepared to redeliver the information?
1R - The course is designed to so that you can walk in off the street and leave with everything you need to implement the course into your LE Agency's Med Plan to include student handouts, full power point presentation, classroom / range guides, videos, TECC Guidelines.

Students were expected to follow the power point for teach backs as that is how the course is designed, too much swaying from the 88T guidelines / power point during the teach backs would result in students being redirected back to the content that we should have been covering. This was evident on both the Med Block and Range Block as people have a way of doing things their own way. Understanding the purpose of the course, which is to teach 88 Tactical LE TacMed blocks, I don't think this was a negative.

To answer your questions specifically, we were given little time to prepare and a student's ability to think on his feet and follow the course outline weighed in their favor when it came doing "well". I wasn't the first student to do teach backs and read ahead on the student handout so that I wouldn't get tripped up when it came my turn in front of the group. In looking at all of it from 30,000 feet, the class sets students up to go back to their agency, set up a course, review, review, review and then teach the material to others. Are you going to be a "pro" by running through a 4 hour Med Block...nope. Will a good instructor be able to take the material and run with it...yep.

2Q - How much class time was lecture vs hands-on?
2R - Roughly 75% to 25%.

3Q - How much powerpoint?
3R - Shawn used power point to guide the first 4 hours of the course, which was the Med Block. We also used the power point on teach backs...those who had a background could elaborate, those that didn't, didn't need to. It was more of a guide, not death by power point.

4Q - Were visual aids locally produced, NAEMT TCCC/TECC material, mil, other?
4R - By visual aids I am guessing you mean power points and hand outs, these were produced by 88 Tactical and included information and videos from a variety of sources to include TacMEd Soultions, TCCC, TECC, MIL and others.

5Q - How were supplies used/distributed in the class for practice? Individual kits, group gear, skill stations?
5R - Supplies were set up as "group gear" and in stations depending on the skill being trained / tested.

6Q - Were you able to open original dressing/bandage/kit packaging during practice and drills? If not every time, at least a few?
6R - No...at least not that I recall. I think all of them contained the original packaging and we were able to see how they come shipped.

7Q - Any use of moulage, tissue simulants, limb sections, mannequins? Wet or dry?
7R - We used a commercially available wound packing simulator that was supposed to simulate a GSW, it also had a mechanical blood pump attached, I do not recall the name. No other moulage or tissue simulators. We also had a commercially available "mannequin" head designed for NPA training.

8q - Were different types of dressings, packaging, TQs, extraction devices and adjuncts discussed and differentiated? Made available to you for hands-on practice?
8R - Yes; Olaes Bandages, Isreali bandages, several chest seals, CATS, SOFT's and SOFTW's. As for extrication devices we used nylon webbing for drags.

9Q - The students in your class had credible LE and/or med background. How little could a prospective student come in off the street with and successfully complete the course?
9R - Again, in looking at everything this class sets you up to walk in, get a grasp on why we are doing what we are doing, how to do some basic skills and then sends you on your way with everything you need to show other LE folks the "basics". As always there are certain guys that will want to rewrite everything because that's what they do...and on the other hand there are guys that will recognize it for what it is and run with it. To summarize that, as long as an Instructor Student is in the class for the right reasons (they want to be there) they will do fine. Like wise on the shooting block, if you don't know how to run a pistol, you are going to be in over your head as this one is designed to help you learn how to run it with your primary ONLY and support hands ONLY. If I was going to give a negative on the course it would be to add another day to the course where paying students could come in and we could teach the under Shawn's eye.

This was my fourth firearms specific "Instructor" Course I've taken to date, the others being NRA Pistol Instructor, Surefire Low Light Level II Instructor and CSAT's Tac Pistol/Rifle Instructor. This Course as well as CSAT's were the only ones that required teach back portions, both places also set students up to leave and go right into teaching the information learned on site, and BOTH strongly encouraged students to use the information provided (verbiage specifically) during teach backs...or you heard about it. The other two were rather worthless in my opinion when it came to "Instructor Development".

Hope this helps!

V/r - Rob

Very helpful, thank you.