Global Medic sent a team of two trainers, Robert Selfridge and Glenn Munro, to Kurdistan, in Northern Iraq, to run the program for 25 medics, including 3 Senior Medics and 8 new staff. This is the third time that Global Medic has run this program for MAG Iraq. Due to recent infrastructure improvements in Kurdistan, MAG has lost some of its previously trained medics to local hospitals; medics that our staffers had gotten to know over the previous two programs. This did, however, provide the opportunity to meet and become acquainted with some relatively new medics. This also provided the Global Medic staffers the opportunity to confer with Dr. Shamal – the physician that MAG Iraq has on contract, and who overseas their medics.
The program itself was run at the Chamchamal training base; however, the medics themselves came from all of MAG’s operational sectors: Chamchamal, Sulymaniyah, and Dahouk. These medics bring a wealth of experience to the classroom, some having been MAG medics for upwards of 15 years. The medical training that Global Medic provides refreshes their current knowledge base and brings new protocols and new best practice to their current training. The importance of ensuring that some aspects of this training are passed on to the technical staff was emphasized so that these individuals are better able to help themselves as well as the medic, should the need arise.
Finally, at the end of the program, practical exams, consisting of a series of multi-patient scenarios, were run. These exams involved situations in which the medics may actually find themselves and emphasized blast trauma. In order to deal with the number of patients involved, the medics had to demonstrate triage and the ability to delegate to others.
