Medics Learn on ‘Living’ Dummies

02/14/2007

David Axe
Military Times
February 14, 2007


Medics and doctors from the 82nd Airborne Division are learning their trades on $57,000 dummies that breath, bleed and "die" if you don't treat them right. It's all part of a trend of increasingly realistic training for Soldiers.
At the Medical Training Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, instructors monitor trainees using ceiling mounted cameras as the students race into large room fitted with Hollywood-style special effects. Lights flash, gunfire echoes in the distance and smoke wafts across the "battlefield," obscuring several Medi-Man dummies lying on the ground.

The dummies are remotely controlled by the instructors to simulate particular injuries. Some have gaping belly wounds or spray blood – actually a red fluid that can be chemically tweaked to reflect different injuries – from severed limbs. Others might be breathing irregularly, their pump-activated chests rising on just one side. "A trainer can change a dummy's behavior according to trainees' actions," says Staff Sergeant Glenn Gonzalez, noncommissioned officer in charge of the facility.

The Army's increasing use of sophisticated dummies echoes trends in the civilian medical community. What's different is the environment surrounding the dummies. The Fort Bragg facility has an urban range where medics must treat dummies in tiny, filthy rooms or on the second stories of poorly lit buildings. For simulating the difficult task of hauling a wounded Soldier downstairs, instructors swap the lightweight, sensor-equipped dummies for 200-pound dummies without all the sophisticated gear.

But all this high technology can't replace an old-fashioned obstacle course, Gonzalez says. "One thing we discovered [in Iraq] was that we needed more lane training – picking up a 200-pound medical dummy in full battle rattle."

Teams of six trainees race down a path in Fort Bragg's forest. They must treat and carry any "casualties" they encounter along the way – usually two per team. Obstacles include barbed wire, trenches and holes filled with mud. Instructors throw training grenades to keep the medics' heads down.

"I guarantee you they're exhausted by the time they reach this point," Gonzalez says, standing near the barbed-wire obstacle. The idea, he says, is to make sure medics can make smart decisions about treating casualties even while scared and tired. Gonzalez and his fellow instructors have trained around 1,800 medics and doctors in the past year.

"There have been around 2,400 Soldiers killed in Iraq due to enemy action," says Captain Earnhardt, division spokesman. "The reason that's 2,400 and not 10,000 is this training."