Battlefield approach saving civilian lives
The British Army has posted a video on YouTube called Emergency: From Battlefield to Barts, that highlights how surgical techniques developed by the airborne Medical Emergency Response Team (MERT), operating in battlefield situations, are helping to save the lives of civilians in the UK
The British Army has posted a video on YouTube called Emergency: From Battlefield to Barts, that highlights how surgical techniques developed by the airborne Medical Emergency Response Team (MERT), operating in battlefield situations, are helping to save the lives of civilians in the UK.
The video starts with an interview with a police officer who was knocked off his motorbike by a car, who says that while lying at the side of the road with severe injuries, he feared for his life.
The video then goes on to interview Major Tom König, an NHS surgeon and British Army Reservist who works at St Bart’s Hospital in London, who says his professional highlight was being deployed to Camp Bastion in Afghanistan, where he was asked to operate all night and all day, which, he says, was a situation he had never been in before, especially given the ‘aggressive’ nature of the surgeries that were performed in order to save lives. He said: “Bastion, for me, made me as a trauma surgeon.” Major König was the surgeon that operated on the injured policeman.
Lt Colonel Graham Sunderland, an NHS surgeon and British Army Reservist, is next to appear in the video and he emphasises what the MERT staff are capable of teaching civilian paramedics, and that what they have already taught has ‘revolutionised the care of patients not just across the UK, but across the world’.
MERT personnel, explains Major König, operate from the back of a helicopter, typically a Chinook, and are tasked to treat soldiers at the point of impact, rather than waiting until they arrive back at base. The medics are quick to give the injured personnel fresh frozen plasma, to counteract bleeding, and resuscitate them early on so that wasted time is minimised in the operating theatre. These lessons can then be taken back to the UK. Catastrophic haemorrhage control is one of the key changes that has been made to civilian care as a result of lessons learnt on the battlefield, he said. The team-based approach is also one that has translated from the military to civilian paramedics, working together to get the patient to a place of safety as quickly as possible. Another lesson learnt is the damage control surgery – so the minimum amount of invasive surgery is done initially, and then the patient is handed over to critical care doctors; further surgery can be performed later if needed.
The police officer who began the video finishes it, saying: “One good thing to come out of conflicts would be that the experience they gain in war zones is being used on people like me back in the UK.”