Vanderbilt University Medical Center nurses recently participated in a four-day Tennessee National Guard trauma training event which included the inaugural Fundamental Critical Care Support: Resource Limited (FCCS: RL) course.
The event, hosted at VUMC, featured specific resource-limited training for austere environments that military personnel may deploy to, such as treating fever in the tropics and using ventilators in emergency evacuations and transport, said Cathy Wilson, MSN, RN, ACNP.
“It’s all about military readiness,” she said.
Wilson, trauma outreach and injury prevention coordinator, said the training also covered mass casualty incidents and the use of mobile Army hospitals. A procedure lab was included.
The event was attended by 12 National Guard personnel from throughout Middle Tennessee, including medics, physicians and advanced practice providers. Four VUMC staff also attended.
“We received lots of great feedback on the military FCCS course,” Wilson said. “They felt like they learned a lot of material they didn’t already know, and for some, it was a great review.”
Wilson said the event came about when a National Guard representative approached Vanderbilt about providing ongoing targeted trauma training at VUMC. Chris Brown, CCP, trauma outreach educator, along with Wilson, facilitated the training which presented the opportunity to utilize the Society of Critical Care Medicine’s resource-limited course. She held an FCCS course months earlier that included nursing staff and focused on intensive care patient management.
“This is one of the many programs that support our military-civilian partnership at Vanderbilt,” said Teresa Hobt-Bingham MSN, RN, NE-BC, associate nursing officer-Surgical Segment. “We are proud to offer this class to teams and our military community.”