"... took the combined forces combat casualty care course, and have done a few trauma rotations in inner-city ERs (New Orleans and Norfolk) ..."
Interesting read. Knowing "how" to react and "reacting" in a appropriate, timely manner in a chaotic environment is a big jump even with the right kind of practice (as opposed to fake practice: http://bootload.posterous.com/through-my-eyes-fake-practice ) especially at the first response end. How do you train for the gap between working in calm controlled environments to chaotic ones?
It's common in the military to train for extreme scenarios, because sooner or later you might encounter them in reality (i.e. war) where you are forced to do it whether you have trained for it or not.
There’s also the case of that one guy blinking “torture” in Morse code.
I think we may oftentimes underestimate the chasm of difference between proper training and the lack thereof. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine brought that into focus for me, and probably a lot of people, that you can dress the part, talk the part, and still be complete garbage.
It might be very easy to miss the signals when you’re focused on all the things that real warfighters have committed to muscle memory.
You can always take a class from an org like Stop the Bleed or NOLS that trains regular people. We can’t predict how we’ll react in emergencies we haven’t drilled, but I bet even a little bit of training goes a long way.
Training is training, and it's all beneficial. And a good portion of my training has been in trauma care, medical response, and techniques. It resulted in my getting my EMT license, though I never used it. It all falls under "harder to kill".
In the military we train this as being “brilliant on the basics” with the follow on, as you said, that it is the way to train an adaptable and competent professional who works in high stress situations.
There’s a cliche that when you’re under real life stress, you fall back to your training. It’s a cliche for a reason. The whole purpose of training is to install these behavioral programs, whether in self defense or in a law enforcement or military context.
I remember reading a comment on AskReddit from an Iraq veteran. They were clearing a house and walked past a stairway. He checks the stairway and there’s a guy pointing an RPG directly at him. Without even thinking, he shoots and kills the guy. This was his first real combat engagement, and he said he was kind of shocked that without any conscious thought his training just sort of took over.
There’s another anecdote about the training thing. I forget where I heard it from, but the guy did lots of martial arts and knew the techniques to disarm someone attacking him with a knife. Anyway, this guy gets attacked with a knife, and his training just kicks in, and he successfully disarms the guy and takes the knife from him. And then—because this is what he does in training—he immediately handed the knife back to the guy, who stabbed him. That’s a pretty dire illustration of the point, I think, but people under stress can be extremely stupid exactly because they are executing whichever program got imprinted into their brain.
> Then someone has the wrong definition of "training". Training is properly done as part of actual operations. You don't "train" to do something and then do it. You train by doing it, while others more senior to you are watching you while they're doing their part of the operations.
I have a hard time understanding that. We all know that enormous amounts (maybe most) training is done outside actual operations, both in the military and otherwise. Obviously you are aware of that, so do you mean this in a specific context? Is the US Navy somehow different (and are you in the USN)?
Interesting read. Knowing "how" to react and "reacting" in a appropriate, timely manner in a chaotic environment is a big jump even with the right kind of practice (as opposed to fake practice: http://bootload.posterous.com/through-my-eyes-fake-practice ) especially at the first response end. How do you train for the gap between working in calm controlled environments to chaotic ones?
Cudo's, HM's ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_Hospital_Cor... are well trained because sometimes they are the closest to medical aid you get and as such are much respected.
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