


Podcast Episode 94: We are Back
After some time to reorganize, restructure, and strategize, we will be continuing to update best practices, share ideas and raise the important questions faced by medics around the world. We have taken this step to lay the old prolonged field care working group construct to rest and form a new organization (with the same core people): the Prolonged Field Care Collective.

Prolonged Casualty Care for all
The wait is over... The Role 1 Prolonged Casualty Care Guidelines for the entire DoD are now available here and on the Joint Trauma System website! This was a monumental undertaking from the beginning

Podcast Episode 61: TBI Update with Dr. VanWyck
Traumatic Brain Injuries coupled with other injuries can be one of the most difficult wound patterns to manage in the field. Learn to manage TBI on its own and when other complications arrive you will be in better condition to handle an even more difficult situation.

Video Recap of a Civil War Field Hospital Reenactment and PFC Display at Bentonville Battlefield in NC
ATTENTION FORT BRAGG! TOMORROW! Modern SF PFC Medical Exhibition to Contrast a Civil War Field Hospital Reenactment THIS WEEKEND at Bentonville Battlefield in NC The Battle of Bentonville was fought 154 years ago just a short distance from Fort Bragg, NC. Each year the North Carolina Historic Site Staff and reenactors commemorate the battle with different types of reenactments. This year the focus is on Civil War Medicine and the originally preserved Union XIV Corps Field Hospital at the Harper house. This Event is called, "A Fighting Chance For Life." It is important for us to look deep into the past and hold close the lessons learned which now benefit all mankind. I thought that this would be the perfect opportunity in which to display the advents of modern combat medicine in order to compare and contrast the care received by those who sacrificed so much on our own home soil under such terrible circumstances. While Chloroform and ether anesthesia were gaining acceptance and being used in the United , antiseptic technique and germ theory were just emerging from Joseph Lister and Louis Pasteur across the Atlantic. This important discovery could have saved tens of thousands but would not be widely adopted in the US for decades. Amputations were common place without the more conservative debridement strategy instituted by Dr. Theodore-Marin Tuffier in 1915. Penicillin wasn't discovered the first time until over 30 years after the war in 1897 by 23 year old Ernest Duchesne and not used to treat a human until 1942 after rediscovery by Alexander Fleming in 1928. The Ambulance Corps was arguably one if the greatest contributions to modern combat medicine to come out of the war from the Surgeon to the Army of the Potomac, MAJ Jonathan Letterman. He is widely recognized as, "The Father of Modern Battlefield Medicine." His evacuation chain included tiered levels of care starting with stretcher bearers and far forward dressing stations which led back to field hospitals and larger hospitals beyond that. These levels of care which paved the way for the current roles of care allowed the Union Army to truly preserve the fighting strength by keeping fighting men in the fight and returning as many as possible to the front lines. Prior to that men would either lay dying on the field of battle for days or their squad mates would stop fighting and carry them far to the rear. You can now walk through an original Union Field Hospital, The Harper House, at the Bentonville Battlefield in Four Oaks, NC complete with original blood stains on the hardwood floor where over 600 soldiers were treated. We will have a tent set up with a modern demo of prolonged field care to include some of the latest high tech gadgets such as the SAVE2, TempusPro and many others on the grounds a few feet from the Civil War Field Hospital and reenactors. Once the sun goes down and we are packed up there will be additional professional role players reenacting multiple surgical procedures including some of the following from historic records. The night time tours are $15.00 if tickets are still available but the exhibition during the day is free until 1600. You can hear more about Dr. Letterman and see more of the exhibits available in the visitors center on Saturday at 1500 and Sunday at 1400 by Civil War Historian Chris Grimes. If you can't make it check back and I'll update this post with more of my own pics from the weekend. For more information or tickets to the night tour, check out the links on the post at www.prolongedfieldcare.com See you there!

Get Started Here
After extensive cooperation and collaboration with operational medics and Docs at home and abroad, we continue to see that there is a clear desire to improve patient care by incorporating […]

New CPG! Traumatic Brain Injury Management in PFC
Traumatic Brain Injuries coupled with other injuries can be one of the most difficult wound patterns to manage in the field. Learn to manage TBI on its own and when other complications arrive you will be in better condition to handle an even more difficult situation.

Free JSOU Book: “The Death of the Golden hour and the Return of the Guerilla Hospital” COL (RET) Warner D. “Rocky” Farr M.D.
From the Back Cover: Colonel Warner “Rocky” Farr has made an important contribution to the body of SOF knowledge with this well-researched monograph. He advances the understanding of the many […]

Podcast 23: Clinical Practice Guidelines for the SOF Medic
While at the 2017 Remote Damage Control Resuscitation(RDCR) conference put on by the Tactical Hemostasis, Oxygenation and Resuscitation(THOR) network in Norway, Sean took the time to corner Dr. Shackleford to get her thoughts on the Joint Trauma System Clinical Practice Guidelines. Be sure to check out the new JTS Facebook, LinkedIn Pages, Instagram and Twitter feeds and YouTube Channel for more updates.

SOMSA ’17 Poster Presentations
If you missed SOMSA this year here are the Academic Posters from the 2017 Special Operations Medicine and Scientific Assembly

Analgesia and Sedation JTS/PFC Clinical Practice Guideline
TheJoint Trauma System joined up with us and several of our working group members to bring you this, our third CPG, for PFC.As with every PFC CPG, this is the […]

Deployment Downloads
Pre-deployment checklists, cheat sheets and other resources now updated! Everything I am posting below could help anyone who finds themselves in over their heads

SFMS / SOCM Prolonged Field Care Card
This is the newest version (v22.2) of the single page Prolonged Field Care Card. It is in use in both the Special Forces Medical Sergeant (SFMS) Course as well as […]

PFC Sponsored by SOMA
The Special Operations Medical Association (SOMA) was founded in 1992. It now consists of hundreds of members in pre-hospital, tactical, wilderness, austere, disaster and deployed medicine. The primary goal […]

The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery on the Future of PFC
The following article was published in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. If you haven’t read it, it’s a great look into the amount of time and effort […]

Prolonged Field Care Classes for 68Ws
This post is for the both the PA charged with training medics in the Battalion Aid Station as well as the medic with the initiative to take their medical education

THOR Fresh Whole Blood Triage and Screening Tool
The Trauma Hemostasis and Oxygenation Research (THOR) Group has recently published an evidence-informed emergency donor panel questionnaire and triage tool that can be used for screening potential donors in contingency situations.

SOMSA 2016 Academic Posters
Basically a science fair for grown up medic nerds. Each of the posters is about 3 feet by 4 feet wide and pinned to giant partition walls.

$47 Million For Prolonged Field Care
This is an amazing opportunity for clinicians and researchers to make needed advances in the operational medicine provided far forward by our medics.

P4G contest: SONO QUiZ Winners
Congrats to our patch winners! In order of correct answer submission: Shawn Joshua Ryan

P4G contest: Winners (+ word on snake bites)
First of all congrats to our patch winners! In order of correct answer submission: Kevin Mitch WJ Bowman

Principles for Practicing Effective Prolonged Field Care
After witnessing certain trends from participating in, and observing many training scenarios and AARs. These principals glare at me each time I watch a medic go through a PFC

P4G contest: Winners (+ word on malaria)
First of all congrats to our very first patch winners! In order of correct answer submission: Dennis Jarema Dave Schneider Charles

SOLCUS @ JTS Tele-Conference #500
As promised, here it is – the SOLCUS talk on ultrasound education in special operations medicine. It was given at the Joint Trauma System Combat Casualty Tele-Conference # 500, on Feb 18th, 2016. Once again – many […]

JTS Combat Medic Teleconference
The 500th weekly Joint Theater Trauma System Trauma Teleconference out of San Antonio featured our own SOLCUS Point of Injury Ultrasound curriculum. It was specifically geared to the level of enlisted SOF medics and up. […]

2015 Year in Review
The following is a letter from Sean sent out on our big email list. If you’re not on the list don’t worry because it is posted here in it’s entirety. The […]

CALL FOR CASES!
The U.S. Institute Of Surgical Research Joint Trauma Service and PFC Working Group need your help: The JTS is working to conduct a retrospective case review relating to PFC in […]


The PFC Truths
The Original SOF Truths were created to inform those both in, as well as out of, Special Operations not entirely familiar with the operating conditions faced in uncertain environments. This […]

PFC Video Lecture Series Ep 1: Documentation in PFC
I hate hearing about other guys who have had to reinvent the wheel when there is so much to draw from already. I was initially going to record this as […]

Position Paper – 10 Essential Core Capabilities for Prolonged Field Care
This post has been a long time coming. This is where it began and may be the most important tool we have to offer. This is the 10 Capabilities Position […]

FOAMed, SMACC and PFC
I hate not knowing an acronym. In my line of work acronyms are language and the ignorance of one normally results in the ignorance of entire programs or departments. FOAMed […]

Joint Trauma Service Clinical Practice Guidelines: The Standard of Deployed Medicine
The Joint Trauma System (JTTS)Clinical Practice Guidelines(CPGs) are the standard of care for all US Military Medcal Providers. They are backed by evidence and represent the current expectations of care.

WE ARE LIVE ON iTUNES!
After many, many hours of work collaborating, recording, editing and coding, Prolonged Field Care is live to be downloaded and especially subscribed-to from iTunes! This is another huge leap forward […]