KANDAHAR - A first of its kind, the 2 courses were designed to fill shortfalls in the health care provider training, as well as strengthen their ability to provide quality care within the critical moments after an incident occurs.
Critical Care - "What you're seeing here is a training team that has come down from the NMH in Kabul to train our new providers, on the critical care aspect of taking care of our trauma patients," said AF Col. Lorn Heyne, Chief of Medical eTT, Kandahar Regional Military Hospital.
The importance of the training was also underscored by the Kandahar Regional Military Hospital cmdr. "This training is very important for us. About 2 years ago when we started our hospital, our doctors were not as strong in their practice as they could have been. Since then, mentors and doctors came from the capital from other provs to help train our hospital staff, and it's (hospital capability) kept growing better... it's very good," said Col. Abdul Baseer. "For example one year ago I started work with
the ICU. At that time my personnel, my nurses, and my doctors at that time were not strong in the ICU. For this reason, I started focusing on training my ICU ward...my ICU is better now than all the regional military hospitals. But the reason for that is training, training, training.
Blood Component Process - In addition to the critical combat care training, KRMH staff were trained on the blood component process as well. "Basically what we did was work on some blood component production which is essentially the collection of whole blood, the centrifugation, and splitting of the plasma and red cell portions into separate components," said Navy Cmdr Leslie Riggs, medical eTT mentor for the NMH, Kabul.
"We want to organize all regional hospital blood banks to work the same way. So I'm here to train officials of blood banks to standardize their practices," said Dr. Sakhi, blood bank supervisor, quality control mgr, NMH, Kabul.
"I think so far the training is a success. The proof of that is in the refrigerator and in the freezer right now," said Cmdr Riggs. "The blood units and the plasma are ready when needed."
"The important thing that we've seen from this visit is Afghans teaching Afghans," said Cmdr Riggs. "I've come down to help arrange the visit, provided some background knowledge, but my mentee was able to sit this morning, and teach one-on-one with his Afghan counterparts, how to do the job... essentially they did it themselves."
