Pole-Vaulting The Shark

There are any number of "tacticool" courses out there.

It's a free country, some are run by consummate professionals, and some by shameless hucksters looking to prove P.T. Barnum correct (and succeeding beyond the dreams of mere avarice).
Caveat emptor.

But when someone purporting to teach a tactical contractor medical course issues a "round count" requirement, and then piles on by suggesting that 2250 rounds is probably 1000 rounds too low, but they're caving to the ammo shortage, grab your wallet with both hands.

But then, I was blissfully unaware of all this, preferring the sharks to go about their way of getting fed, while I pursue my own daily crust in my own manner. Live and let live.

Then, someone on a forum noted that he was ponying up $1650 for a 5-day class.
So I took a look at the syllabus.
And my head exploded, as seen below:

Good holy Christ!

I doubt if I spent much more than $1650 on nursing school to get an R.N., and it wasn't in pre-electricity days.

If that's the going rate, I'm definitely in the wrong end of this business.
$9/hr/student, for a class that's not even half as long as the D.O.T. mandate for basic EMT??
One 12-student class, per year, and I could take the other 51 weeks off!

I don't care how good they are, at those rates, the class should come with Kate Upton giving you a BJ for a graduation gift.

If you know absolutely nothing, and this was taught by SF 18Ds and Harvard Med School Emergency Medicine docs, I'd say $500, maybe $750 including materials.

YouTube is free, EMT classes at the JC or OccCenter are usually under $200 all-in, and you could put together a kick-ass kit with the $1400 you'd have saved.

And that's without even considering the amount of course time spent (wasted) on cram-teaching squad tactics, and burning through those 2250 pistol and rifle rounds which is time you aren't doing hands on, didactic, or lecture coverage of little things like hemorrhage control, airways, field improvisation, or all the other spiffy stuff you can get for free by downloading the PowerPoint's for TCCC free online about 5 places, and spending 50 hours on YouTube, or even better, 42 hours on youTube, and 8 hours 1:1 with a decent trauma RN, paramedic, Physician Asst., M.D., or even "just" a decent medic from the local volunteer fire squad.

Anybody purporting to teach you medical training who has a mandatory round count is a quack.
Not only is the round count at Harvard and Stanford Med School zero, but it's the same round count as at Ft. Sam Houston for 18Ds back in the day.

Medical training is medical training. Yes, there's obviously a component that requires a tactical mindset, but if you're burning through the basic load of a squad in combat, you aren't a medic, you're the Terminator.

I don't care who teaches this, or what their other bona fides are, this smells like Rambo Fantasy Baseball Camp.

Seriously, find a good TCCC class, and learn how to use the medical toys and apply the assessments. Learning medical stuff from guys who want to shoot stuff up is as silly as taking shooting classes from doctors. (Oh, too late, Front Sight grads. WTF?)

What next, Massad Ayoob teaches field appendectomies with the .40 S&W?
The MagPul Dynamics School of Cardiology? For $5K a pop??

Trauma training and firearms go together like peanut butter and jellyfish.
One is going to be good, and the other is going to be horrible. You guess which.
Medicine, even field medicine, is a higher thinking and fine motor set of skills. You have to know it well on its own before anyone gets anything out of loud noises and high adrenaline tactical exercises, except being really stressed, and poorly trained.

I'm trying to think of the medical school, nursing school, paramedic school, or anything like where they run the participants through BUD/S Hell Week the entire time, but I'm coming up with nothing.

I have seen this business model before though.
Usually, it's called Film School.

Ay carumba!

Best Regards,

 

Boys and girls, if the market is charging $1650 for less than half the content of the most basic EMT course available, save your dough and stay home.
That market is broken, crazy, or both.

 

The American Academy of Orthopedics publishes Emergency Care And Transportation Of The Sick And Injured, 10th ed., every several years. It's the bible of emergency medical care, and it's available on Amazon for $62.76.

 

The PowerPoint notes for Tactical Combat Casualty Care are available free online in multiple places. (And I've already covered the Average Citizen highlights on this blog.)

So are any number of videos demonstrating and explaining all the concepts and specific techniques in both of the above, on YouTube.

This is one of the few places where the Internet is truly wonderful.

 

If, out of sheer gratitude, you'd like to split the difference, and send me half of the $1487.26 I just saved you, I'll be happy to tell you where to send a check for my $743.63.

 

And when someone shoots at you, duck and cover, then shoot back.

 

Now I've just saved you 2250 rounds of ammunition better allocated for other purposes.

 

So by internet standards, I'm also a tactical shooting school guru.

 

Genuflect as you leave the Presence.