SOARescue

This 2-day course covers topics designed to decrease preventable death in the tactical situation.

This 2-day course covers topics designed to decrease preventable death in the tactical situation. Topics include Hemorrhage control; surgical airway control and needle decompression; strategies for treating wounded responders in dangerous environments; caring for pediatric patients; and techniques for dragging and carrying victims to safety. While there are many other topics covered, the primary purpose of the course is to “buy time” so that the patient may make it to the surgeon alive.

At the core of the TECC program are three distinct phases that have been well-proven by TCCC-trained personnel in the war against terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The phases are as follows:

Direct Threat Care: Care rendered while still under attack or in an inherently dangerous situation.

Indirect Threat Care: Care provided while the threat is not active, but may re-emerge at any point.

Evacuation Care: Care delivered while the casualty is being evacuated from the incident site. This is hopefully a setting where the patient is en route to a hospital or surgeon.

TECC focuses on the medicine during these phases of care and provides guidelines for managing trauma in the civilian tactical or hazardous environment. While TECC has a tactical slant, it takes an all-hazards approach to providing care outside the normal operating conditions of most EMS agencies, such as responding to a mass casualty or active shooter event. This course is not designed to teach the “tactics” of an active shooter or like event. We overview tactical expectations but do not instruct on the firearms or threat suppression component of such events.