The TMI Tactical Emergency Medical Support (TEMS) Course

This TEMS course was originally designed for civilian SWAT medics, and not for military medics.  However, to date, our TEMS course has been the single most requested course by both civilian agencies and military units.  Many military units have provided this training to all levels of medics (including combat life savers, 91W/68W, and 18D), and believe that many of the “civilian concepts” are useful as an adjunct to the military technique already taught.

TMI will provide all medical instruction, training aids and supplies.

The requesting unit will provide training facilities to include a classroom, breakout rooms, and field training sites.

 Tactical Medics International (TMI) offers a 3-day, 30+ hour course of Advanced Operational Medicine.  This is an intense classroom and field-training program designed specifically for the federal agent / medic that provides emergency medical care and support to law enforcement / tactical teams. 

 Much of the content emphasizes Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC).  TMI uses the most current version of the TCCC guidelines, approved by the United States Military, Special Operations Command.  The Military-Based Course Content Includes: Background of TCCC, How People Die in Combat, Care Under Fire (Assessments / Tourniquets / Direct Pressure, Hemostatic Dressings / Casualty Carries), Tactical Field Care (Airway, Sucking Chest Wounds / Tension Pneumothorax / Shock / IV’s, Fluid Resuscitation.  The civilian course content includes: Types Of Missions, TOMS, Medical Threat Assessment/Medical Preplanning, Medical Aspects Of Specific Operations, Light Discipline, Assessment and Remote Assessment Methodology, Equipment Selection/Special Medical Gear For Tactical Operations, Airway, Hemorrhage Control, Suture & Local Anesthesia Lecture, Fluid Resuscitation / IVs / IO, Chest Wounds / Needle Thoracentesis, Officer Rescue, Extraction Under Fire, Sensory Deprivation Assess/Hemorrhage Control & IV, Sensory Overload Assessment, Sensory Depravation Airway, Team Health, Ambulatory Sick Call, Preventive Medicine, Extended Operations, Work/Rest Cycles, Critical Incidence Stress, Heat Stress, Hydration, Sports Medicine, Medicine Across the Barricade, Medical Effects of Less Lethal Weapons, and much more.

 The course consists of lectures, tactical scenarios, practical exercises, and a written examination. 

 Basic Trauma Life Support Military Edition is a 16-hour comprehensive course covering the skills necessary for rapid assessment, resuscitation, stabilization, and transportation of trauma patients.  Created for the military medic, the primary objectives of the course are to teach the correct sequence of evaluation and the techniques of resuscitation and packaging a patient.

For years, the Board of Directors and the Editorial Board of BTLS International have felt that the principles of BTLS, while applicable in all conditions of pre-hospital care, do not seem to completely address the unique challenges of the military at war or in very austere environments. 

Excerpt by William Pfeifer, Col MC, USAR

BTLS Military Edition, 2005

Prehospital Trauma Life Support (PHTLS) “For the military”

Beginning in 1988, the U.S. military aggressively set out to train its medics in PHTLS. Coordinated by DMRT, the Defense Medical Readiness Training Institute at Fort Sam Houston in Texas.  PHTLS is taught all over the United States, Europe, and Asia and anywhere the flags of the U.S. Military fly.  In 2001, the Army's 91W/68W program standardized the training of over 58,000 Army medics to include PHTLS.

The participation of the US military in the program includes providing a chapter to cover the particular needs of the military and provide information on tactical medicine that is of interest to any population in the modern world.  The sixth edition military text was completely reconstructed.  It begins with a preface and introduction and moves into combat field care, tactical field care, CASEVAC and triage in tactical combat casualty care.  Blast injuries, medical operations in urban injuries, MEDEVAC and military medical ethics are also discussed.