KSF medics becoming self-sustainable
Story and photos by U.S. Army Capt. Randy Ready
4th Public Affairs Detachment
K
osovo Security Force soldiers graduated from
a First Responder train-the-trainer course at a
ceremony held at Camp Skenderbue Oct. 25.
exercise that increased the stress levels of the soldiers to
see how they would react when responding to a medical
emergency.
Soldiers from Multinational Battle Group-East’s Task Force
Medical led the 5-day course designed to teach the critical
life-saving skills needed when responding to a medical
emergency while also teaching the students to train and
certify their own soldiers in future courses.
“We had a live scenario for them, kind of like a real life
situation in order to see how they do with the hands on skills
we taught them over the week,” said U.S. Army Spc. Tiffany
Kolmerten, a medic with TF Med from Fort Wayne, Ind.
“We threw a couple of some of the harder wounds at them
and they were able to treat them pretty well.”
“The train-the-trainer course is a force multiplier,” said U.S.
Army Sgt. Alberta Ashong, the course’s lead instructor and
a native of Lanham, Md. “It gives them the opportunity to
really reinforce the information they know and also to make
it easier for them to teach [the course] themselves.”
The culminating event for the program was a practical
To increase the stress levels for the practical exercise, the
students had to run laps and do pushups beforehand to elevate
their heart rates. They then entered a blacked out room,
having to rely solely on a headlamp to see, with gun?re and
explosions blaring out from a stereo.
continued on page 13
PG 11