Bridgeport hospital corpsmen put battlefield medical skills to the test

BRIDGEPORT, Calif. — Hospital corpsmen and medical officers assigned to Navy Medicine Readiness and Training Detachment (NMRTD) Bridgeport put their trauma care and emergency response capabilities to the test July 27 during a mass casualty (MASCAL) exercise designed to strengthen operational medical readiness in one of the Navy's most remote and demanding training environments.

Conducted at Dewert Branch Health Clinic aboard Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center Bridgeport, the exercise challenged personnel to assess, triage and treat multiple simulated casualties while applying Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC) principles in a field environment with limited resources, confined treatment spaces and competing medical priorities.

For Chief Hospital Corpsman Noah Morrison, the clinic's leading chief petty officer and an independent duty corpsman, the exercise reinforced the importance of maintaining expeditionary medical capabilities alongside the clinic's daily healthcare responsibilities.

"Our mission is providing readiness and support to personnel in a high-risk training location that is both remote and mountainous," Morrison said. "This MASCAL training is particularly important to increase our clinic personnel medical capabilities to stay mission ready and warfighter focused."

The training was developed in coordination with Hospital Corpsman 1st Class Jeffrey Baldwin, the Mountain Medicine course chief, to provide a casualty receiving collection point alongside the course's field training.

"Originally, this event was to support the Mountain Medicine students as they treated role-player casualties and medevaced them to us via helicopters, where we would receive them as a Role 1-plus casualty receiving checkpoint," Morrison said.

The scenario was designed to test casualty transfers between medical teams, including radio communication, patient handoffs, triage and the clinic's ability to receive multiple casualties during a real-world emergency.

However, when Nevada Air National Guard helicopters scheduled to support the exercise were redirected to a firefighting mission, organizers adapted the training to focus on casualty assessment and treatment at the clinic.

"We adjusted fire and continued the mission by incorporating mannequins versus role players and setting the medical tent up outside our clinic," Morrison said.

The revised scenario allowed Bridgeport personnel to concentrate on trauma assessment, triage, treatment and team coordination while maintaining normal clinical operations nearby. An independent duty corpsman and front desk corpsman remained available for readiness requirements and walk-in patients, allowing most of the clinic's staff to participate.

Hospital Corpsman 1st Class Brian Romero, a search and rescue technician from Navy Medicine Readiness and Training Unit China Lake, also supported the training and shared his expertise with the corpsmen.

Inside the medical tent, participants received simulated casualties, each presenting multiple traumatic injuries requiring immediate assessment and intervention.

"We set up four casualties at a time to be brought into the tent and utilized our senior medical officer and physician assistant as our triage and medical leads," Morrison said.

The scenarios included bilateral amputations, open pneumothoraxes, traumatic brain injuries, burns and blast-related trauma. Each casualty presented multiple injuries, requiring two-person medical teams to identify life-threatening conditions, establish treatment priorities and demonstrate their TCCC skills.

The injuries reflected the types of complex trauma military medical personnel may encounter during combat operations, where casualties often require simultaneous interventions and rapid decisions about treatment priorities.

Participants applied the MARCH-PAWS assessment framework, a systematic approach to battlefield trauma care. MARCH prioritizes massive hemorrhage, airway, respiration, circulation and hypothermia and head injuries, while PAWS addresses pain management, antibiotics, wounds and splinting.

The framework helps medical personnel identify immediate threats to life while ensuring other critical injuries are addressed as patient care progresses.

Unlike a traditional clinical setting, the field medical tent placed several treatment teams in tight proximity, requiring personnel to manage patients while navigating restricted space, limited supplies and competing demands.

"Working in a small space of a tent with limited supplies was intended to provide operational realism and enact stressors to enforce closed-loop communication, resource allocation, and triage and reassessments to prompt rapid clinical decision-making," Morrison said.

Closed-loop communication, in which instructions and critical information are acknowledged and confirmed, was particularly important as multiple teams worked simultaneously. Participants also had to maintain awareness of available resources and coordinate treatment decisions without disrupting the work of neighboring teams.

"Similar to a normal clinical environment, we had one provider work with one or two corpsmen as a team," Morrison said. "However, having multiple smaller teams working together in a tight space was something we wanted to stress test for our internal communication, time-sensitive assessments, treatments and decision-making."

The exercise also offered an opportunity to evaluate how the clinic's personnel and resources could be employed during an emergency involving multiple patients. Morrison said he was able to lean on the instructor and TCCC experience of Romero, Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Carlos Calvillo and Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Brandon Ormond to each run a casualty scenario to assess feedback. They employed fake blood and moulage to prompt simulated injuries and utilized Deployed Medicine’s TCCC Tier 3 Tactical Trauma Assessment Sheet to annotate critical tasks.

Located in the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains, the Mountain Warfare Training Center supports military personnel preparing to operate in challenging mountainous and cold-weather environments. Its remote location, rugged terrain and demanding training activities make timely medical intervention and emergency response capabilities particularly important.

For the Bridgeport medical team, those conditions underscore the value of maintaining trauma care proficiency beyond routine clinical responsibilities.

Throughout the exercise, Morrison observed participants applying established trauma care procedures while demonstrating the ability to recognize and respond to complications.

"I was encouraged to see the overall MARCH-PAWS algorithm was applied consistently, so the basics were applied," Morrison said.

One example involved hospital corpsmen problem-solving in real time to ensure effective casualty treatment.

"Some successful skills the corpsmen demonstrated were recognizing inability to achieve hemorrhage control with one tourniquet and problem-solving by maintaining direct pressure while applying another," Morrison said.

The response highlighted the importance of reassessing casualties and adapting treatment when initial interventions prove ineffective.

Morrison also emphasized the value of identifying mistakes during training, when personnel have the opportunity to correct deficiencies without placing patients at risk.

"The intent of training is building the reps and sets but also allowing the common errors and mistakes to be made in an environment where we can learn from them with low risk," Morrison said. "All feedback we get provides ways to improve."

The lessons identified during the exercise can help inform future training and strengthen the team's ability to respond to increasingly complex casualty scenarios.

"We want to identify those failures and common pitfalls in our training to build toward a better product for the real fight," Morrison said.

Although the revised exercise did not include the originally planned helicopter evacuation and casualty transfer components, the clinic was able to preserve its core trauma training objectives. The adjustment also demonstrated how medical personnel can adapt when operational requirements change unexpectedly.

The training supports a broader Navy Medicine responsibility to maintain personnel who can transition from providing routine healthcare services to delivering casualty care in operational environments. At Bridgeport, that responsibility extends to supporting military training in an austere environment where medical personnel may be required to respond to emergencies before additional resources become available.

Morrison said the exercise also aligned with the commanding officer's emphasis on sustaining medical skills and mastering the fundamentals.

"This is in line with our commanding officer's guidance to continuously train skill sustainment and proficiency in building brilliance in the basics," Morrison said.

For Morrison, the importance of maintaining these skills extends beyond the immediate mission at Bridgeport. It is also about honoring the legacy of the clinic's namesake, Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class James E. DeWert, who posthumously received the Medal of Honor for providing lifesaving care to wounded Marines under enemy fire during the Korean War. His actions serve as a reminder of the responsibility today's corpsmen carry to be prepared when lives are on the line.

"The crew of DeWert Branch Health Clinic, just like our Medal of Honor recipient namesake, are preparing to be an asset on the battlefront," Morrison said.

Navy Medicine Readiness and Training Detachment Bridgeport operates the DeWert Branch Health Clinic at the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center in California's eastern Sierra Nevada, providing healthcare and medical readiness support to service members training in the remote mountainous region. The detachment falls under Navy Medicine Readiness and Training Unit China Lake, a subordinate command of Navy Medicine Readiness and Training Command Twentynine Palms.

Navy Medicine Readiness and Training Command Twentynine Palms operates Defense Health Agency military treatment facility Naval Hospital Twentynine Palms, which delivers safe, high-quality healthcare to service members and their families. The command supports the health and readiness of warfighters at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, the Marine Corps' largest live-fire training installation, while readying Navy Medicine personnel to provide expeditionary medical support around the world.

Legal Disclaimer:

EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.