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Navy Medics Get Prepared for Combat with Tour of Duty in Chicago
- hprotagonist 9y agoAnecdotally, one of the reasons that trauma surgeons from chicago and baltimore have a really pristine reputation is that they get a lot of practice. I remember hearing about programs like this perhaps 15 years ago, so I'm not surprised they're ongoing.
- Feniks 9y agoAmerica in general. A surgeon in the Netherlands can wait DECADES for a kid with gunshot wounds. Its just textbook stuff but if you want to see it in action the US is a good place to learn.
- reaperducer 9y ago> America in general "America in stereotype" is more accurate. Your Netherlands comment is also hyperbole. Here's an article about a kid who was shot and killed on an Amsterdam playground a few weeks ago. Two other people were wounded by what in America would be called an "active shooter." But that only happens in America, right? https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/910572/Amsterdam-shooting-Netherlands-gun-attack-Dutch-police-Grote-Wittenburgstraat https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/910572/Amsterdam-shooti...
- dennisnedry 9y agoHe's a troll. Read through his comment history, it's nothing but "love socialism; hate capitalism" rhetoric.
- zapita 9y agoAnecdote aside, it's established beyond a doubt that the US has much, much higher rates of gun violence than European countries, across every dimension: wounds, deaths, assault, self-harm, accidents... You name it, there's a statistic documenting it. For example, according to healthdata.org, in 2016, physical violence by firearm was the cause of 210.5 DALYs per 100,000. In the Netherlands it was 10.8. A DALY is a standardized metric defined by the WHO as "lost years of life" to measure the burden of a disease or other affliction. So in 2016 physical violence by firearm caused 20 times more harm per capita to the US population than to the Dutch population. I'm willing to bet that for self-harm and accidental firearm wounds the gap is even larger, given the idiotic habit Americans have of keeping guns and ammunition stored in their homes. Source: https://vizhub.healthdata.org/gbd-compare/ https://vizhub.healthdata.org/gbd-compare/
- reaperducer 9y agoI'm not disputing that America has far more gun deaths than most (all?) other nations, but to generalize that the violence in Chicago is endemic to the rest of the nation is pure fantasy. There are tens of thousands of towns, villages, and cities that see little to no gun violence each year. But they don't get written up in the Daily Fail.
- DKnoll 9y agoThere are ~19,000 incorporated places (cities, towns and villages) in the United States so to say 'tens of thousands' of them see little to no gun violence would be a significant overstatement.
- reaperducer 9y agoIf you limit yourself to incorporated places. There are a lot more places in America that aren't incorporated. And just because a town isn't incorporated doesn't mean it's small. Pahrump, Nevada, for example, is 40,000 people and it's not incorporated.
- zapita 9y ago> to generalize that the violence in Chicago is endemic to the rest of the nation is pure fantasy. That wasn't the comment. The comment was that most surgeons in the Netherlands can wait decades before seeing a gunshot wound. If they want hands-on experience, the US is a good place to learn. I think that's a very reasonable comment (EDIT maybe "years" is more reasonable than "decades"...) and if you account for accidents and self-harm, you really don't need to go to Chicago or Baltimore. The vast majority of gun wounds in the US are accidents or self-harm and occur all over the US, including "quiet little towns". I would argue that the real fantasy is to think that the gun violence epidemic is limited to big cities with black guys in hoodies shooting at each other.
- BenSahar 9y agoIt's more common than people like to acknowledge. The violent crime rate in Chicago is lower than ~30 other US cities. It sits about even with Tulsa. The thing that makes Chicago stand out is that its population transforms the rate into a larger raw number.
- ForHackernews 9y agoHow many gunshot murders are there per year in the NL? How many emergency surgeons are there?
- dang 9y agoYou posted a ton of nationalistic swipes to HN after we asked you not to. That counts as arson here. It reliably leads to flamewars. We've banned the account. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- arsonists 9y agoThat's arson. Dang, I think you need to take a break, and go play outside in the sun for a little while.
- walshemj 9y agoAs was Northern Ireland during the troubles and they still deal today with a fair number of Kneecappings or 50/50's
- strong_silent_t 9y agoI hadn't heard 50/50 in that context before, it is a gunshot to the spine?
- walshemj 9y agoApparently so 50% chance of walking after
- donquichotte 9y agoI think its because there's a 100% chance of having the lower 50% of the body paralyzed [1]. [1] https://www.irishtimes.com/news/killing-may-end-the-blind-eye-to-ira-bruality-1.176734 https://www.irishtimes.com/news/killing-may-end-the-blind-ey...
- AmVess 9y agoA lot of practice, it seems. Chicago has one shooting every 4 hours and one murder every 17 hours.
- 0x27081990 9y agoGun control didn't help that much after all
- Mo3 9y agoI'm always afraid of the (incredibly little) chance of getting shot here in Germany, because I'm sure the doctors wouldn't have a lot of experience
- exabrial 9y agoNo matter where you live, it's always good to be versed in first aid, cpr, and some basic self-defense. Our civilized world can turn itself upside in a hurry, via natural disasters or man-made causes.
- jf 9y agoGenuinely curious, when was the last time that our civilized world turned itself upside down in a hurry?
- protomyth 9y agoAreas where natural disasters have hit have been very problematic, and the US has had large scale riots. Houston seems to be the exception. Local area reversions to anarchy can get you shot.
- exabrial 9y agoParis train attacks, hurricanes in Florida, the machete attacks in London...
- mjevans 9y agoPretty much any natural disaster. The quakes in Mexico and the hurricanes that hit the gulf region islands and countries last year spring to mind.
- DoubleCribble 9y agoAs of right now, it might be upside down if you're stuck in Syria or Yemen? In the US, you might recall the outcome of the Rodney King verdict as an example.
- mattmanser 9y ago
- Avshalom 9y agoThe fact that the naval training base is in Chicago probably has something to do with it too.
- dnautics 9y agoI believe for combat trauma surgery (the navy supplies all doctors and medics for the usmc), they typically send MDs to Johns Hopkins or UCLA surgery residency programs. The surgeon who operated on Gabrielle giffords was a us Navy fleet marine force surgeon.
- geofftrojans 9y agoThis article is referring to Navy Corpsman. They are medics, closer to an EMT than a surgeon. After boot camp at Naval Station Great Lakes, they go to "A" School (basically, their specialty school) in San Antonio. It is my understanding that this training at a hospital trauma center would be after their school in San Antonio, before they were attached to a Marine unit and deployed.
- ataturk 9y agoWe should not overlook the fact that in the 1970s, trauma surgeons practiced in the Bronx. Nothing ever really changes in the human condition, but new generations forget the old lessons.
- forapurpose 9y agoThere's an old narrative, so familiar we hardly notice it, that American cities are dangerous and crime-ridden. It's something that many WSJ readers and others grew up hearing, and which is a popular setting in entertainment - a setting for genre we all know, like the Victorian period pieces - and entertainment is the only exposure many have to cities outside of commercial and entertainment districts. That narrative is obsolete; generally, crime is very low, gangs are a thing of the past, and so are drug wars. I've spent time in cities, outside the commercial and entertainment (and wealthy loft) districts, and you'd be surprised what you find - regular people going about regular days, boringly normal. Lots of infrastructure that needs attention too. I'm concerned that articles like this one further the old, dramatic narrative, and there's a cost: It depicts these places as almost different countries, stereotyped settings for genre entertainment like a Hollywood backlot, not as real communities; and it writes off the residents as a criminal class that need to be suppressed by police (and fuels a lot of racism), not as people with talent, hard work and dreams who need transit, education, jobs, freedom, opportunity, and all the same things we need sitting at our desks reading about it. (There are dangerous, crime-ridden areas in the U.S.; some are in cities and some are not. On the other hand, I guess Wall Street is in a city, and what's the per capita crime rate there? They should send JAG for training!) EDIT: Some minor edits
- UncleEntity 9y agoSending Navy medics to work in a trauma center is racist now? Maybe it's just me but if you want them to get experience treating trauma victims then it might be a good thing to send them someplace there's a lot of trauma victims. ...and, yes, I know this will get downvoted into oblivion because I don't downvote posts that I disagree with but say why...
- mzkply 9y agoChicago and Baltimore are the most desired spots for all trauma surgery interns. Note that I went to McGill in Montreal, Canada.
- ams6110 9y agoDetroit used to be, probably still is up there, but maybe not as bad as it once was.
- megaman22 9y agoArguably a more deadly place than the war-zones they would be deploying to https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2016/09/08/homicides-in-chicago-eclipse-u-s-death-toll-in-afghanistan-and-iraq-infographic/#6e888d477d75 https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2016/09/08/homici...
- warriormonk5 9y agoSo at it's peak we had ~160k Americans in Iraq. At Afghanistan peak, we had ~100k. Chicago has ~11 times as many Americans. I'll take my chances with Chicago. It's actually shows how remarkably low we were on the casualty rate in the wars we had. Far cry from the civil war (~25% casualty rate).
- kevin_thibedeau 9y agoLittle solace for the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqui and Afghan civillians.
- ilamont 9y agoA relative served in the U.S. Army as a doctor many decades ago and said some of the training involved shooting goats with a small caliber gun, removing the bullets, and stitching them up. His specialty was not surgery - I assume this was training for basic field medicine and emergencies. I've read somewhere that Navy Corpsmen have a training exercise in which a pig is anesthetized and then burned or shot and the job of the corpsman is to keep it alive as long as possible. ETA: This was happening in 2012 but PETA objected (1); I am not sure if it's still part of the program. 1. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/03/pigs-military-medic-training-san-diego-county.html http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/03/pigs-military-...
- sandworm101 9y agoPart fact, part fiction. Some of that did happen but many stories dont add up. For instance the common tale of removing bullets from animals: Why? That isn't part of a medics job. One would never attempt to remove a bullet in the field. Such actions would do far more harm than good. Even in hospital it is often much better to leave the bullet in, at least until the patient is stable.
- burkemw3 9y agoVariants of this have been happening for a while. Here's 2008 article: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/intense-training-for-military-surgeons/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/intense-training-for-military-s...
- kwillets 9y agoThe trauma surgeon who treated the North Korean soldier that escaped through Panmunjom was trained in San Diego, and that makes him one of the most experienced trauma surgeons in the country. There's much less practice available in countries with gun control.
- neonate 9y agohttp://archive.is/MtjAr http://archive.is/MtjAr
- chanandler_bong 9y agoI went through paramedic school in Los Angeles in the early 90s and worked along side US Army medics who were sent there to learn how to deal with trauma cases. Ah, good times at UCLA Medical Centre and MLK.
- spodek 9y ago> “The experience here can’t be replicated elsewhere, unless you have a major land invasion,” Parkland, Columbine, Newtown, . . . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_th...