Today we finished the chemical portion of the Medical Management of Chemical and Biological Casualties. We started the day with the most exciting part, the field training exercise (which, in military speak, is FTX).
The FTX was actually in two parts. In the first part, we had twelve of our classmates dressed up and acting as casualties, and we each had to triage them. That was hard enough, but we were doing it in MOPP 4, which made it intellectually and physically challenging. I don't know what MOPP stands for (and I don't know anyone who does, except maybe Wikipedia), but here's a diagram of what the MOPP levels are:
MOPP gear is designed to protect against a chemical or biological attack, so obviously, the overgarment doesn't breath all that well. Fortunately, we were allowed to wear our PT uniforms under it instead of field gear (as demonstrated in the MOPP 0 column), and the weather was pretty mild, so it wasn't terribly uncomfortable.
As you can see, the people doing the decontamination are also in MOPP 4, which makes things a bit difficult (it is not easy to cut through a MOPP suit while wearing thick gloves). Also, during the 20 minutes a patient is being decontaminated, he isn't really available for medical treatment, so you have to make sure everyone who goes through decontamination is stable enough to last 20 minutes without care. We also practiced things like intubating patients (well, dummies), starting IVs, and giving injections of atropine (for nerve agent exposures), while wearing MOPP 4 (and I'm not great at the first two without MOPP gear).
After that, we did some after action reports to discuss the course, and then they set us free (at 5). Tomorrow begins the bio portion, which I'm really looking forward to (mostly because it'll be a review and I'll get to feel really smart).
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