At least the town is serving a purpose now....

https://www.wsj.com/articles/n...n-chicago-1521028800

CHICAGO— Konrad Poplawski, a 22-year old Navy hospital corpsman, is about to be deployed as a battlefield medic with the 2nd Marine Division, which has served in deadly battlegrounds in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But first, he is making a pit stop at Cook County’s Stroger Hospital, which the Navy says is among few places here in the U.S. that provide experience treating the types of wounds he will inevitably see on the battlefield.

For so long “the first time a corpsman got any trauma experience was when they were deployed, and some would just freeze up,” said Captain Paul Roach, a U.S. Navy surgeon at the Lovell Federal Health Care Center north of Chicago. “We don’t want that to happen anymore,” said Capt. Roach, who heads the program in the Great Lakes region.

The Navy is working to formalize a pilot program that has been tested here for three years, rotating newly enlisted hospital corpsmen—the combat medics for the Navy and Marines—and those needing a refresher while they are back home, for six to eight weeks through Stroger Hospital’s trauma center. The 14-bed unit treats over 6,000 trauma patients yearly, many of them with penetrating, life-threatening wounds akin to those on the battlefield.

Though Chicago is experiencing a sustained drop in murders since a dramatic spike in 2016, it remains a city where a high number of gunshot victims cycle through the trauma center night after night.

About 30% of patients at Stroger Hospital, on Chicago’s near West Side, are admitted to the trauma ward with wounds from firearms, compared with a national average of 4.2% for level 1 trauma centers—hospitals certified to have the resources to handle multiple victims with penetrating and other serious wounds—according to the National Trauma Data Bank.

“The experience here can’t be replicated elsewhere, unless you have a major land invasion,” said Dr. Faran Bokhari, who chairs the trauma & burn surgery unit at the hospital.

In many front-line Marine units, immediate medical care for gunshots, explosions or shrapnel comes from these corpsmen who mostly are young, new to the service and new to seeing up close the wounds they train to treat. The Navy medics, known as hospital corpsmen, typically receive 14 weeks of training in first aid and patient care in Fort Sam Houston in Texas after initial boot camp, and then have the option for additional training.

When I was still in undergrad studies, one of my professors said if you get shot, you'd want to be sent to Stroger because they have a lot of experience there treating gunshot wounds...

Cook County hospital for years has been the sought after place to train if you want to become a trauma surgeon. Charity hospital in New Orleans used to be the other.

I like to ask people which hospital they would go to if they had a gunshot wound. Most choose poorly and would end up in some nice suburban hospital, rather than an inner city hospital with trained trauma surgeons.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:


I like to ask people which hospital they would go to if they had a gunshot wound. Most choose poorly and would end up in some nice suburban hospital, rather than an inner city hospital with trained trauma surgeons.

Truth.

Shock Trauma in Baltimore is another one where I know SF medics have trained.

The MDs say 'welcome to the knife and gun club!'.

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quote:

Originally posted by Sig209:

...Shock Trauma in Baltimore is another one where I know SF medics have trained...

So have MD State Police medics in the Aviation Section.

18D Special Forces Medic course, part of the instruction course load is to do an internship-type block of time at an ER. I believe San Antonio hospitals are first up but, other metro area hospitals like Chicago, Baltimore, St.Louis, Dallas and Kansas City area hospitals participate as well.

quote:

Originally posted by Edmond:
When I was still in undergrad studies, one of my professors said if you get shot, you'd want to be sent to Stroger because they have a lot of experience there treating gunshot wounds...

Same thing here in Houston with Ben Taube Memorial...one of the best trauma centers in the country and quite miraculous seeing how it's a Harris County run teaching hospital.

This is an excellent training experience for them. Good on the Navy for making this happen.

quote:

Originally posted by Ronin1069:
The Navy medics, known as hospital corpsmen, typically receive 14 weeks of training in first aid and patient care in Fort Sam Houston in Texas after initial boot camp, and then have the option for additional training.

Since when do Navy corpsmen train at Ft. Sam? I don't remember any when I was there.

quote:

Since when do Navy corpsmen train at Ft. Sam? I don't remember any when I was there.

HM school, at least A school, was at Great Lakes when I was there in '69-'70. So was a big-ass beautiful hospital that was chock full of 'Nam casualties. This training with the Army has got to be part of the joint base crap that seems to be spreading. HM training is now gone from there as is the hospital.

An uncle of mine interned at Cook County in the mid-1960's. Told me he had to treat The Plague there! Also said that a third abortion for a woman came with a free fallopian tube tie, whether she wanted it or not. Times have changed.

This is been going on for a while.

Cook county, Northwestern, Sinai, Christ... the major trauma centers have been a teaching center for Navy medics and a few Army & Air Force medics as well.

I was at Ft. Sam Houston in 1969-1971 and we trained some other Service Branches but it was for immediate burn treatment only. No general trauma training.

quote:

Originally posted by FRANKT:

quote:

Since when do Navy corpsmen train at Ft. Sam? I don't remember any when I was there.

HM school, at least A school, was at Great Lakes when I was there in '69-'70. So was a big-ass beautiful hospital that was chock full of 'Nam casualties. This training with the Army has got to be part of the joint base crap that seems to be spreading. HM training is now gone from there as is the hospital.

The Corpsman school moved from Naval Station Great Lakes to San Antonio in 2010. The new James Lovell Federal Health Care Center opened in 2011, which is a merger of the VA hospital in North Chicago and the Great Lakes Naval Hospital. They closed the old Naval Hospital on the Naval Station.

Lets hope they don t initiate any crazy-prohibitive gun control laws around there, or the medics will lose a valuable training venue.

quote:

Originally posted by RichardC:
Lets hope they don t initiate any crazy-prohibitive gun control laws around there, or the medics will lose a valuable training venue.

We did and do... Doesn't really stop the -/+ 700 homicides and the -/+ 3,000 shot in this city.
This town is a really, really good place to learn how to treat a GSW. It's about the only good thing that comes out of the violence here.

Last time we were gearing up to go to the Mid East after 9/11 I read an article the army had a training arrangement with Los Angeles county hospital. Where they brought in all the gangbangers with no health insurance to get sewn up. Seems reasonable any major Shithole city has a significant number of shot up hoodlums any given Saturday night and our military docs need practice .... why not.

Speaking of cook county hospital. My great aunt was a young nurse on duty the night they brought John Dillinger in on a platter. She recalled It vividly on occasions she visited with her sister ( my grandmother) in the 1980s and I was a teen.

Every large city has one.
Here in north GA it's Grady if you are shot, stabbed or burned.
Just be careful getting there and try not to visit or you may end up with one of the three.

Now to make it a little more real...They should be riding with the first responders for on scene training in the real world. Not a closed managed setting like a trauma hospital. Whole different animal to deal with.

quote:

Originally posted by Gustofer:
This is an excellent training experience for them. Good on the Navy for making this happen.

quote:

Originally posted by Ronin1069:
The Navy medics, known as hospital corpsmen, typically receive 14 weeks of training in first aid and patient care in Fort Sam Houston in Texas after initial boot camp, and then have the option for additional training.

Since when do Navy corpsmen train at Ft. Sam? I don't remember any when I was there.

In 2011 the Corpsman school was moved from Great Lakes to Joint Base Sam Houston. Anderson Hall is the main building there and named after my little brother.

this isn't a new idea.

In 1986, as a paramedic trainee I was sent to Washington Hospital Center's MEDSTAR trauma ER to get the experience of patients with gunshot wounds, stabbings, and the like.

I was required to stay for one 8-hour weekend evening shift.

My first one: Zero patients. The staff there were astonished that there was no one brought in.

My second one, which I was not required to do: Zero patients. The staff decided they liked my coming in.

My third one, which I wasn't obligated to do: One patient with a superficial knife wound on her crack addled body. The docs did everything to her, including tapping her belly to ensure that was no internal bleeding. It led to a funny story.

So this woman's name was Dorthy. As anesthesiologist is administering the magic elixir he says to her "Dorthy, repeat after me...There's no place like home...There's no place like home...There's no place like home..."