By Amanda Thames
The Daily News
JACKSONVILLE, N.C. — The wind threatened to blow over the tents where men and women suffered from burns, leg wounds and open chests – and all of it was fake.
The Naval Hospital at Camp Lejeune held their annual mass casualty training Tuesday. Sirens wailed as an ambulance brought in a constant stream of injured military members wrapped in bandages and sporting fake blood and bruises.
The purpose was to stress the emergency department of the Naval Hospital to test their responses, according to Lt. Cmdr. Joseph Kotora, the EMS medical director.
A blast was simulated on a different part of the base, Kotora said, and the injured patients were brought to the hospital for treatment. The planning for the event took seven months and used more than 500 participants, including JROTC students from Lejeune High School and Marines from Camp Johnson.
“This training is very, very difficult to execute and plan,” Kotora said.
The mass casualty training is the best way to prepare for a real life scenario, Kotora continued, but the hardest part of the training is what can’t be done.
“We can’t simulate the stress,” Kotora said. “We can’t simulate the fear.”
That fear, in a real mass casualty situation, comes from friends and family members as well as injured persons, Kotora added.
The main purpose of the training is to grow and find places that need work so the process in a real casualty is as perfected as possible.
“We don’t do this drill to pat ourselves on the back,” Kotora said.
Outside the hospital were three tan tents sitting on mats. The green mat tent was for the “walking wounded” who needed medical care; the yellow mat tent included anyone who could wait an hour or two to be seen, like someone with a head injury; and the red mat tent was for critical cases, Kotora said.
New this year was a barcode tag that was color coordinated to match the tent the patient should be sent to, according to Frank St. Denis, a simulation coordinator. Every tag is scanned at each location to help track patients from place to place and confirm where the patient needs to go next.
The barcodes are part of the North Carolina Patient Tracking System, according to Danielle Bolton, public affairs specialist for the hospital. The training Tuesday was used to vet the process and effectiveness of the tags.
The tags are also helpful when multiple patients are riding in one ambulance, Bolton said, as is often the case to get as many patients help as quickly as possible. Paramedics can call ahead to say, for example, they have four yellow, two green and one red patient coming in, allowing the hospital to prepare for the severity of injuries.
Military members involved in Tuesday’s training can take the skills they learned into combat, said Naval Hospital Commanding Officer Capt. Rick Freedman. Each component of the response is graded and reviewed so improvement can be made, if necessary.
“They say you fight how you train,” Freedman said. “For us, you treat how you train.”
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