Combat First Aid

MED 201 · Field Health and Medicine · Level 200 (Phase Two)

A Royal Army College course in saving life in the field.

Course length: approximately 10 to 15 hours of online self-study, studied asynchronously at the student's own pace, together with any in-person practical instruction and assessment the course requires.

Foreword

Most soldiers will never fire a shot in anger. A great many will one day kneel beside a casualty, on a battlefield, at a road accident, in a flood, or on a cold night among people in need, in the few minutes that decide whether that person lives. In those minutes there is rarely a doctor. There is a soldier, what they carry, and what they know.

This course teaches that knowledge. It builds on the first-aid foundation in Basic Training (Module 12) and turns it into competence: the small number of things that save lives when done quickly and well, and the judgement to know your limits and get the right help. It is written for the Royal Kaharagian Army's work, which is as likely to be humanitarian as it is to be combat, so it serves the wounded soldier and the injured stranger alike.

The law and the conscience of the Army require one thing above all: that care is given to everyone who needs it, friend, civilian, and former enemy, by their need and not by who they are. That principle runs through every lesson.

Who this course is for

Every member of the Army. No medical background is assumed. The course is the foundation on which any later medical training is built, and the standard of care every soldier is expected to be able to give.

What you will be able to do

By the end you will be able to:

• approach a casualty safely and work through a clear, ordered sequence under pressure;
• stop catastrophic bleeding, the commonest preventable cause of death;
• manage a casualty's airway, breathing, and circulation, and recognise and treat shock;
• respond to cold injury, heat injury, burns, and drowning, which matter in the Principality's climate and coast;
• move and evacuate a casualty and hand them over with a clear report;
• sort many casualties when help is short, and know the firm limits of your own training; and
• look after the minds of the injured and your own; and
• sustain a casualty over hours, in remote or austere conditions, when evacuation is delayed.

How the course works

The course is blended. The knowledge is studied online, at your own pace, lesson by lesson, with a check of understanding at the end of each. The hands-on skills, tourniquets, wound packing, carries, and the rest, cannot be learned from a screen and are taught and certified in person, under qualified supervision. A member completes the course only when both the knowledge and the practical skills are confirmed, and renews the qualification each year.

All clinical content in this course is set under the oversight of a medical officer, and is the floor of care, not the ceiling. You give the care you are trained to give, and you call for those who can do more.

The approach: one sequence, not three

First-aid systems can confuse a learner with competing schemes. This course teaches one harmonised sequence, so that under stress there is one drill, not a choice:

• In the field, the order of priority is MARCH: Massive bleeding, Airway, Respiration (breathing), Circulation, Hypothermia and the head. It puts the commonest battlefield killer first.
• Beneath it sits the clinical method used everywhere for the acutely ill or injured, ABCDE (Airway, Breathing, Circulation, Disability, Exposure) with a SAMPLE history. MARCH gets the dying casualty through the first minutes; ABCDE is the fuller assessment that follows.
• Over all of it sits the law: humane care for everyone, and the dignity of the casualty, living or dead.

Structure

A note on limits and safety

This course can kill if it breeds overconfidence, so it is honest about its limits throughout. You are a first-aider, not a doctor or a paramedic. The most important skill in the whole course is knowing the edge of your competence and handing over at it. Practise only what you are trained and currently authorised to do, and never on a real casualty what you have only read.

A note on sources

This is the College's own course. It is built on the open, internationally recognised standards, the ICRC and IFRC first-aid material, the World Health Organization and ICRC Basic Emergency Care, the United Nations medical and buddy-aid handbooks, and Commonwealth field practice, written fresh in Kaharagian and Commonwealth terms rather than reproduced. Where a procedure is shown, it follows current accepted practice; the practical detail is confirmed by the College's medical staff.

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