
Navy Medics Get Prepared for Combat with Tour of Duty in Chicago - oicu812
https://www.wsj.com/articles/navy-medics-get-prepared-for-combatwith-tour-of-duty-in-chicago-1521028800
======
ilamont
A relative served in the U.S. Army as a doctor many decades ago and said some
of the training involved shooting goats with a small caliber gun, removing the
bullets, and stitching them up. His specialty was not surgery - I assume this
was training for basic field medicine and emergencies.

I've read somewhere that Navy Corpsmen have a training exercise in which a pig
is anesthetized and then burned or shot and the job of the corpsman is to keep
it alive as long as possible.

ETA: This was happening in 2012 but PETA objected (1); I am not sure if it's
still part of the program.

1\. [http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/03/pigs-
military-...](http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/03/pigs-military-
medic-training-san-diego-county.html)

~~~
sandworm101
Part fact, part fiction. Some of that did happen but many stories dont add up.
For instance the common tale of removing bullets from animals: Why? That isn't
part of a medics job. One would never attempt to remove a bullet in the field.
Such actions would do far more harm than good. Even in hospital it is often
much better to leave the bullet in, at least until the patient is stable.

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hprotagonist
Anecdotally, one of the reasons that trauma surgeons from chicago and
baltimore have a really pristine reputation is that they get a lot of
practice.

I remember hearing about programs like this perhaps 15 years ago, so I'm not
surprised they're ongoing.

~~~
Feniks
America in general. A surgeon in the Netherlands can wait DECADES for a kid
with gunshot wounds. Its just textbook stuff but if you want to see it in
action the US is a good place to learn.

~~~
reaperducer
> America in general

"America in stereotype" is more accurate.

Your Netherlands comment is also hyperbole. Here's an article about a kid who
was shot and killed on an Amsterdam playground a few weeks ago. Two other
people were wounded by what in America would be called an "active shooter."
But that only happens in America, right?

[https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/910572/Amsterdam-
shooti...](https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/910572/Amsterdam-shooting-
Netherlands-gun-attack-Dutch-police-Grote-Wittenburgstraat)

~~~
zapita
Anecdote aside, it's established beyond a doubt that the US has much, much
higher rates of gun violence than European countries, across every dimension:
wounds, deaths, assault, self-harm, accidents... You name it, there's a
statistic documenting it.

For example, according to healthdata.org, in 2016, physical violence by
firearm was the cause of 210.5 DALYs per 100,000. In the Netherlands it was
10.8.

A DALY is a standardized metric defined by the WHO as "lost years of life" to
measure the burden of a disease or other affliction.

So in 2016 physical violence by firearm caused 20 times more harm per capita
to the US population than to the Dutch population. I'm willing to bet that for
self-harm and accidental firearm wounds the gap is even larger, given the
idiotic habit Americans have of keeping guns and ammunition stored in their
homes.

Source: [https://vizhub.healthdata.org/gbd-
compare/](https://vizhub.healthdata.org/gbd-compare/)

~~~
reaperducer
I'm not disputing that America has far more gun deaths than most (all?) other
nations, but to generalize that the violence in Chicago is endemic to the rest
of the nation is pure fantasy.

There are tens of thousands of towns, villages, and cities that see little to
no gun violence each year. But they don't get written up in the Daily Fail.

~~~
BenSahar
It's more common than people like to acknowledge.

The violent crime rate in Chicago is lower than ~30 other US cities. It sits
about even with Tulsa.

The thing that makes Chicago stand out is that its population transforms the
rate into a larger raw number.

~~~
drewbuschhorn
It's really crazy when you look at just how many murders / deaths we have
compared to anyone else.

I decided to check the right-wing conspiracy theory that if you dropped the
top four Democratic controlled cities from the US numbers, we'd be in the
range of other 1st world democracies. No idea which cities those are supposed
to be, but I assume Chicago and NY and LA and St Louis.

Spoiler alert, we're not. Even throwing out all gunshot murders from IL, CA,
NY, LA, MO (New Orleans), while keeping the population, still doesn't get us
below 2x rate of CAN. You have to toss TX, NJ, MT, OK, to get in the ballpark.

~~~
rsynnott
Eh? Canada has a lower rate of gun deaths than ANY US state; 1.97 vs 2.78 in
Hawaii, the lowest. Canada’s rate is still high for a developed country,
incidentally.

Edit: sorry, missed you were talking about murders; I was using data for all
deaths.

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Avshalom
The fact that the naval training base is in Chicago probably has something to
do with it too.

~~~
dnautics
I believe for combat trauma surgery (the navy supplies all doctors and medics
for the usmc), they typically send MDs to Johns Hopkins or UCLA surgery
residency programs.

The surgeon who operated on Gabrielle giffords was a us Navy fleet marine
force surgeon.

~~~
geofftrojans
This article is referring to Navy Corpsman. They are medics, closer to an EMT
than a surgeon. After boot camp at Naval Station Great Lakes, they go to "A"
School (basically, their specialty school) in San Antonio.

It is my understanding that this training at a hospital trauma center would be
after their school in San Antonio, before they were attached to a Marine unit
and deployed.

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mzkply
Chicago and Baltimore are the most desired spots for all trauma surgery
interns. Note that I went to McGill in Montreal, Canada.

~~~
ams6110
Detroit used to be, probably still is up there, but maybe not as bad as it
once was.

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Mo3
I'm always afraid of the (incredibly little) chance of getting shot here in
Germany, because I'm sure the doctors wouldn't have a lot of experience

~~~
exabrial
No matter where you live, it's always good to be versed in first aid, cpr, and
some basic self-defense. Our civilized world can turn itself upside in a
hurry, via natural disasters or man-made causes.

~~~
jf
Genuinely curious, when was the last time that our civilized world turned
itself upside down in a hurry?

~~~
ggg9990
Right now the best examples are Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

~~~
gaius
Haiti

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neonate
[http://archive.is/MtjAr](http://archive.is/MtjAr)

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forapurpose
There's an old narrative, so familiar we hardly notice it, that American
cities are dangerous and crime-ridden. It's something that many WSJ readers
and others grew up hearing, and which is a popular setting in entertainment -
a setting for genre we all know, like the Victorian period pieces - and
entertainment is the only exposure many have to cities outside of commercial
and entertainment districts. That narrative is obsolete; generally, crime is
very low, gangs are a thing of the past, and so are drug wars. I've spent time
in cities, outside the commercial and entertainment (and wealthy loft)
districts, and you'd be surprised what you find - regular people going about
regular days, boringly normal. Lots of infrastructure that needs attention
too.

I'm concerned that articles like this one further the old, dramatic narrative,
and there's a cost: It depicts these places as almost different countries,
stereotyped settings for genre entertainment like a Hollywood backlot, not as
real communities; and it writes off the residents as a criminal class that
need to be suppressed by police (and fuels a lot of racism), not as people
with talent, hard work and dreams who need transit, education, jobs, freedom,
opportunity, and all the same things we need sitting at our desks reading
about it.

(There are dangerous, crime-ridden areas in the U.S.; some are in cities and
some are not. On the other hand, I guess Wall Street is in a city, and what's
the per capita crime rate there? They should send JAG for training!)

EDIT: Some minor edits

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megaman22
Arguably a more deadly place than the war-zones they would be deploying to

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2016/09/08/homici...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2016/09/08/homicides-
in-chicago-eclipse-u-s-death-toll-in-afghanistan-and-iraq-
infographic/#6e888d477d75)

~~~
warriormonk5
So at it's peak we had ~160k Americans in Iraq. At Afghanistan peak, we had
~100k.

Chicago has ~11 times as many Americans. I'll take my chances with Chicago.

It's actually shows how remarkably low we were on the casualty rate in the
wars we had. Far cry from the civil war (~25% casualty rate).

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burkemw3
Variants of this have been happening for a while. Here's 2008 article:
[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/intense-training-for-
military-s...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/intense-training-for-military-
surgeons/)

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kwillets
The trauma surgeon who treated the North Korean soldier that escaped through
Panmunjom was trained in San Diego, and that makes him one of the most
experienced trauma surgeons in the country. There's much less practice
available in countries with gun control.

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chanandler_bong
I went through paramedic school in Los Angeles in the early 90s and worked
along side US Army medics who were sent there to learn how to deal with trauma
cases.

Ah, good times at UCLA Medical Centre and MLK.

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spodek
> “The experience here can’t be replicated elsewhere, unless you have a major
> land invasion,”

Parkland, Columbine, Newtown, . . .

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States)

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ataturk
We should not overlook the fact that in the 1970s, trauma surgeons practiced
in the Bronx. Nothing ever really changes in the human condition, but new
generations forget the old lessons.

