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RP: YSS Resurgence Shipboard emergency cross training Week 1: Basic Emergency Medicine (Open to all Crew)

Locked_0ut

Convention Veteran
RP Date
44.6
RP Location
YSS Resurgence
The feel of the waves crashed against Vec’s boots as he gazed out across the horizon. Even after all these years, he was still amazed by the briny smell in the air. Every model of VR Room Vec had been in had become better and better at replicating tiny details. That was good, the student’s would all get to experience responding to shipboard emergencies from the safety of the VR Room. He decided to enjoy his virtual beach a little longer before he’d have to shift it to a ship’s corridor full of various common shipboard injuries.

Some of the more punctual students began to file in early. Greeting each other, and milling about. Once everybody who’d signed up arrived, Vec addressed them. “Welcome everybody, thanks for signing up. Today’s day one of a three week class. Two classes a week.”

He paused and continued, “This week is Basic Emergency Medicine week, next week is Damage Control week with engineering, and the final week will be your SAR Practical. I don’t expect to turn you all into high speed rescue jumpers, but I do want to start disseminating these skills because moments can be the difference between life, debilitating injury, or death and if somebody gets hurt at your duty station you could save them those precious moments. If you’ve got a question at any time, put your hand up and I’ll get to you.”
 
Tachiko stood beside and behind Vec with datapad clasped to her chest and a polite smile in her face. She was recording every participant's presence for their training file, making a column in her operations logs about who had received such training. One check by each name as they came in the door, then the pad was back against her chest as a comforting shield against all the eyes on her standing up in front of everyone, even if they were mainly on the doc as he spoke. Tachiko was the agreeable, dutiful sort who was not difficult to talk into being Vec's assistant. The Medical patch on her shoulder was an obvious point of pressure, easily used against her by someone not even half as savvy as Vec, and she'd ended up volunteering before he'd even finished asking. Her "other" reputation may make more sense when seen in that light.
 
Cheilith was in attendance, she wasn't a medic, but Vek had suggested that she might be good at it, so she came. She smiled at Vek and Tachiko. "Awesome."
 
(OOC If you get in after this post as if you were already here)

“Welcome, thanks for coming, and all that official stuff,” Vec said, nodding at his class. “And thank you, Motoyoshi, for volunteering to be my assistant,” he added, dropping his normally flippant tone.

“Everybody grab a seat.” The VR Room materialized a teacher’s desk standing in the surf and he perched himself on it. “Welcome again to my Shipboard SAR Crash course, also known as ‘Only Poppy, the lovely Miss Motoyoshi here, and myself have any kind of advanced medical training on this boat and that keeps me up at night.’ Over the next few weeks, you’re going to learn about basic emergency medicine, triage Rescue Jumper style, shipboard damage control, and then tie it all together with a few practical shipboard SAR exercises.”

Vec paused, not wanting to overload his students, “Before we get into the hands on stuff, we’re going to do a bit of a classroom bit. Each of you should have received some digital reading materials when you signed up. One of the pages was on proper triage practices. We’re going to focus solely on Emergency triage. I want you to take some of the rules on that page with a huge heaping of salt. Put a pin in that though.”

The VR room projected four outlines of humanoid figures. The figure on his left had a black eye, the figures in the middle had increasingly severe injuries, and the figure on his right laid prone with cartoonish X’s over the eyes. In SAR, we like to color code casualties. This soldier on my left, your right, is fit for duty. We tend to consider them green. They’re the least important in terms of triage. If their pain is getting in the way of the mission, give them some ibuprofen or something. Don’t let them take up your time. Same for this dead guy over here, this casualty is black. Hope he’s backed up recently. It’s tragic, but you’re not a level 20 necromancer. These two in the middle are your concern. They turned yellow and red. Yellow patients are stable but hurt. Reds are in critical condition, and are at risk of dying without medical attention. You focus on the Yellow first because if you can get them back up and into the fight it helps everybody’s chances of survival. If you don’t take anything from this class remember that, prioritize whoever’s survival maximizes everybody’s survival. If you scroll down you’ll see something about rank priority, ignore that like it’s your ex blowing up your com. I’d like to teach you RJ Triage Rule-Zero: Prioritize mission critical personnel first. On a spaceship, prioritize personnel who keep the ship moving.”


“Pop Quiz,” Vec said not wanting to spend the entire class listening to his own voice, “You walk into the bridge and see both the helmsman and the captain laying on the deck bleeding. You’ve assessed both of them and determined that they’re both in yellow condition, who do you save first?”
 
“As you did not mention, if the First Officer was a casualty or injured, I would choose the helmsman, with the First Officer assuming command until the Captain can resume their duties or are revived,” Koyama answered from her seat, legs crossed at the ankle and hands clasped in her lap. “Especially if it was within combat conditions, the helmsman would be essential in possible evasive combat maneuvers or retreat.”

Scratching a cheek, she tilted her head slightly, her large golden eyes blinking slowly. “However, that would be situational, would it not? If both are of the same condition, I would prioritize the one most necessary for the moment versus basing it solely on rank.” perhaps it was a little pragmatic, but he’d left gaps within his example she would exploit.
 
Sanda remembered most of her trauma care and first aid stuff that she had been taught in boot camp and in Ranger school. The Ranger school had been quite a bit more through then basic, as the Rangers tended to wind up deep in enemy territory with no back up besides what they could do themselves. Mostly she was attending so she could get to know the new doc a little better and ascertain his skill level, as a doctor and potentially as a combatant.

Sanda listened to the scenario Vec gave and to Koyama's answer. "I would prioritize the Captain first. Starship Captains become Captains by knowing how to do every job on their bridge. The Captain can not only pilot the ship, but as the ship's commander, would have greater knowledge in insuring that the ship responds to whatever crises is at hand." Sanda looked at Vec. "A better example of not prioritizing rank might be the Helmsman and a higher ranking science officer are both down. In that instance, the helmsman takes priority for the same reason's Koyama mentioned, being able to pilot the ship."
 
Vec mulled over their answers. “You’re all thinking like RJs. I’d say the XO is gunning for a field promotion, but that’s also the call I’d have made. Hoshi has a point however. The captain can fly if he needs to. But at that point, his head's so far in the weeds that he's not really commanding the ship anymore. XO has to step up either way. There’s not really a perfect answer in any of these situations. Just the… least bad one. If you went and saved that science officer, that’s objectively the wrong answer. That said, if you’re responding to an incident and see Poppy laying on the floor bleeding, try to help her first.”

“Good job, team,” Vec said with a clap of his hands. “I feel like I should be tossing out candies.”

At Vec’s signal, a diagram of the Resurgence appeared floating between them. “Similar to casualty triage, you will have to be able to triage what parts of the ship are most urgent. A lot of this is up to the judgment of a first responder or incident commander, but I’ll give you my list. Treating casualties, putting out fires, response to containment breaches, whatever: engineering is your top priority, then the engines, the MEGAMI, bridge, main gun/torpedo tubes, Medical, Shuttle, crew, and then anything else. I’m prioritizing places that can either leave us dead in the water or worse blow up half the ship and then leave us dead in the water. After Rule Zero, I want you all to remember there’s no perfect decision. Just the least bad one. If your boat limps home with half the crew dead then you did way better than the boat that blew up taking all hands with it. I want you to think over what locations you’d prioritize in a disaster. If you’ve got a better list, I’ll change mine. Learning goes both ways.”
 
Koyama lifted an eyebrow at the mention of candy. “Lemon would have been my choice.” Clearly not a jest judging from the look on her face. “You’ve forgotten life support.” Adding while also thinking of candied lemon peel. The man had unleashed her sweet tooth. “You may have placed it under the umbrella term of engineering?” she asked from her seat.

“If so, it is one of the more important systems. If we lose it, we lose our air recycling, generation, water, and waste recycling. We keep large stores of water, but if we have to use it for firefighting while said system is down, we are quickly running out. Not to mention the loss of air from said fires and oxygen consumption by the crew. Or filtration of toxic gasses and other airborne contaminants.”

“I do agree with the rest of your assessment, but it would vary depending on the damage inflicted, so it would have to change and we would have to adapt accordingly. And having the crew cross-trained in medical and some basic repair would speed up the process and response time given what may require repair or those that need aid. This is good.”

She cupped her chin, rubbing it. “Although, to be perfectly honest, I would like at least a basic medical kit in those stations. So that if a technician or someone else using the station comes across a wounded crewman, they can stabilize them until help could arrive.”

Looking at the diagram of the Resurgence, she flicked a finger, and several points appeared. “These are where the damage control stations were located. If each included said basic kit, it could save lives that are otherwise lost if medical cannot get to them in time, if at all.”
 
“Thanks for the out XO, but it was an honest oversight,'' Vec said with a rueful grin. “I think I’d put life support around either bridge or medical. Mostly because, a life support failure will kill us slower than say a reactor meltdown. That said, if the ship is in READCON 3 we should already be suited up or be ready to suit up in a moment’s notice.”

“Some of these calls would be made by an incident commander, but barring that, you’ll need to use your best judgment as to where your skills are most needed. In most cases that’ll mean the room you’re in right now. We can get into the weeds about combat decision making and OODA loops and all that jazz, but that’s far beyond the scope of this lesson, and I’m sure every one of you who’ve taken some sort of leadership class are already somewhat familiar.”

“Also, has anybody checked if our XO is a mind reader? I’ve wanted to suggest placing medical kits at strategic locations around the ship. Damage control stations and decompression kit lockers seem like as good a place as any.”

Vec fished a small, gray, vacuum sealed parcel out of his pocket. The container was roughly 12cm and about as thick as a wallet. “Beyond that, with permission, I’d like to make these standard kit. Either carried by on duty personnel or stored at their duty station depending on READCON.”

“This is an IFAK,” he said holding the vacuum pouch out to his students, “an individual first aid kit, specifically this one is a Star Army variant. It’s a more compact and more focused variant of the older Type 32 First Aid Kits. It’s something we cooked up in SASO and it’s got some neat toys in it. I’ll get into the nitty gritty on the hands-on portion of the lesson. I’ll see what I can do about getting us these,” Vec said, wondering if his Silver Card still worked now that he was part of a regular army unit.
 
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