http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/art...ealistic-combat-trauma-mannequin?sf31580139=1
How great is this?
Corpsmen in California will soon receive a batch of 10 training dummies that writhe, bleed and ooze innards. (Rob Curtis / Staff)
By Joshua Stewart
Staff writer
- FILED UNDER
Corpsmen in California will soon have a new mannequin to help them train for tending to the grisliest of combat injuries.
Members of 1st Marine Logistics Group, based at Camp Pendleton, California, will soon receive a batch of 10 training dummies that writhe, bleed and ooze innards. The $53,700 devices are anatomically correct down to each vein, and are designed to be real enough that corpsmen learn how to treat Marines with life-threatening injuries. The convincing details also help prepare them for the stress and fear of that comes with managing life-or-death combat emergencies.
“We’ve developed the most realistic point of injury mannequin on the market,” said Robert McCall, the director of Army and National Guard Programs for North American Rescue. McCall is a former medic at 3rd Ranger Battalion, and his company developed the mannequin with Operative Experience, a business that builds surgical training devices.
“This is a night and day difference from what I trained on,” he said from his booth at the Modern Day Marine expo in Quantico, Va., on Tuesday.
The trauma mannequins can be customized with a series of different injuries. The dummy on display at Modern Day Marine wore a tattered uniform with a severed left arm and knee, a puncture wound on the chest, exposed bones, a gash in the abdomen with a punctured intestine pouring out, as well and a groin injury.
The dummies can pour out five liters of fake blood, and replicate signs of blood loss as they bleed, McCall said. Aside from the blast wounds, the mannequin at the expo had a gunshot wound above the left eye that entered the mouth, breaking teeth and grazing the tongue as it exited the cheek.
“There would be blood here and you could hear gurgling,” McCall said, referencing the wounded mouth.
The disfigured humanoid shook its robotic head in fake pain as its chest heaved, and Marines who passed by stuck their fingers into its mouth to examine its airway.
The mannequin is based on a 180-pound male patient. There isn’t a female version. The battery-powered device can be dropped into a field training exercise so that corpsmen can train in a real-life environment, McCall said.
The trauma dummies can be used to train corpsmen to stop bleeding by applying pressure at appropriate points in the body, he said. They can also show them how to clear airways and other procedures that can keep an injured Marine alive until they can get more intense care.
Robotic medical training simulators are not new to the Marine Corps and are a staple Naval Medical Center San Diego’s Simulation Center, the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland., and Portsmouth Naval Medical Center in Virginia. Some devices can cost as much as $240,000.
How great is this?
