In the British Army, Canadian Forces and other Commonwealth militaries, the Regimental Aid Post (RAP) is a front-line military medical establishment incorporated into an infantry battalion or armoured regiment for the immediate treatment and triage of battlefield casualties. In the US forces, the equivalent is the Battalion Aid Station. The term has been used continuously since the First World War or earlier.
The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of British Armed Forces. As of 2018, the British Army comprises just over 81,500 trained regular (full-time) personnel and just over 27,000 trained reserve (part-time) personnel.
The Commonwealth of Nations, normally known as the Commonwealth, and historically the British Commonwealth, is a unique political association of 53 member states, nearly all of them former territories of the British Empire. The chief institutions of the organisation are the Commonwealth Secretariat, which focuses on intergovernmental aspects, and the Commonwealth Foundation, which focuses on non-governmental relations between member states.
Triage is the process of determining the priority of patients' treatments based on the severity of their condition. This rations patient treatment efficiently when resources are insufficient for all to be treated immediately; influencing the order and priority of emergency treatment, emergency transport, or transport destination for the patient.
The RAP has traditionally been staffed by the unit's Medical Officer, a Medical NCO, and a small number of medical orderlies. Additionally, units have employed stretcher-bearers, and more recently trained medics, for the evacuation and immediate treatment of battlefield casualties.
The RAP has usually been the first stop in the evacuation chain for seriously injured personnel, who are then transported to casualty clearing stations and other larger medical units further to the rear. RAPs are not usually equipped to provide surgical treatment or long-term care.
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Killed in action (KIA) is a casualty classification generally used by militaries to describe the deaths of their own combatants at the hands of hostile forces. The United States Department of Defense, for example, says that those declared KIA need not have fired their weapons but have been killed due to hostile attack. KIAs do not come from incidents such as accidental vehicle crashes and other "non-hostile" events or terrorism. KIA can be applied both to front-line combat troops and to naval, air and support troops. Someone who is killed in action during a particular event is denoted with a
† (dagger) beside their name to signify their death in that event or events.
Battlefield medicine, also called field surgery and later combat casualty care, is the treatment of wounded combatants and non-combatants in or near an area of combat. Civilian medicine has been greatly advanced by procedures that were first developed to treat the wounds inflicted during combat. With the advent of advanced procedures and medical technology, even polytrauma can be survivable in modern wars. Battlefield medicine is a category of military medicine.
The Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) refers to a United States Army medical unit serving as a fully functional hospital in a combat area of operations. The units were first established in August 1945, and were deployed during the Korean War and later conflicts. The term was made famous in the television series M*A*S*H, which depicted a fictional MASH unit. The U.S. Army deactivated the last MASH unit on February 16, 2006. The successor to the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital is the Combat Support Hospital.
A combat support hospital is a type of modern United States military field hospital. The CSH is transportable by aircraft and trucks and is normally delivered to the Corps Support Area in standard military-owned Demountable Containers (MILVAN) cargo containers. Once transported, it is assembled by the staff into a tent hospital to treat patients. Depending upon the operational environment, a CSH might also treat civilians and wounded enemy soldiers. The CSH is the successor to the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. As of November 2017, the United States Army and United States Army Reserve is in the process of reorganizing the Combat Support Hospitals into smaller, modular units called 'Field Hospitals'.
A medic is an umbrella term for a person involved in medicine. The following fall under this term: a medical doctor, medical student and sometimes a medically-trained individual participating in an emergency such as a paramedic or an emergency medical responder.
Combat stress reaction (CSR) is a term used within the military to describe acute behavioral disorganization seen by medical personnel as a direct result of the trauma of war. Also known as "combat fatigue" or "battle neurosis", it has some overlap with the diagnosis of acute stress reaction used in civilian psychiatry. It is historically linked to shell shock and can sometimes precurse post-traumatic stress disorder.
Casualty evacuation, also known as CASEVAC or by the callsign Dustoff or colloquially Dust Off, is a military term for the emergency patient evacuation of casualties from a combat zone. Casevac can be done by both ground and air. "DUSTOFF" is the callsign specific to U.S. Army Air Ambulance units. CASEVACs by air today are almost exclusively done by helicopter, a practice begun on a small scale toward the end of World War II; before that, STOL aircraft, such as the Fieseler Fi 156 or Piper J-3 were used. Casevac aircraft are a non-standardized and non-dedicated vehicle that does not necessarily have en route care, which is used to get a casualty back to another location where they can be treated by professional medical staff.
A field hospital is a small mobile medical unit, or mini hospital, that temporarily takes care of casualties on-site before they can be safely transported to more permanent facilities. This term is used overwhelmingly with reference to military situations, but may also be used in times of disaster. The concept was inherited from the battlefield and is now applied in case of disasters or major accidents, as well as with traditional military medicine.
A casualty, as a term in military usage, is a person in military service, combatant or non-combatant, who becomes unavailable for duty due to several circumstances, including death, injury, illness, capture or desertion.
A combat medical technician (CMT) is a soldier with a specialist military trade within the Royal Army Medical Corps of the British Army.
In the United States Army and Marine Corps, the Battalion Aid Station is a medical section within a battalion's support company. As such, it is the forwardmost medically staffed treatment location.
An aid station is a temporary facility established to provide supplies to endurance event participants or medical first aid and provisions during major events, disaster response situations, or military operations.
The Medical Evacuation Vehicle (MEV) are assigned from the Battalion Aid Station for Battalion-sized units, and dedicated to each of the company-sized elements of the unit and provide treatment for serious injury and advanced trauma cases.
The term military medicine has a number of potential connotations. It may mean:
12 (Vancouver) Field Ambulance is a Canadian Forces Primary Reserve medical unit in Vancouver, British Columbia.
A Casualty Clearing Station (CCS) is a military medical facility behind the front lines that is used to treat wounded soldiers. A CCS would usually be located just beyond the range of enemy artillery and often near transportation facilities. The CCS receives battlefield casualties from regimental aid posts located in the combat zone. Casualties that cannot be adequately treated in the CCS are stabilized there before being transported to a field hospital or military hospital.
68W is the Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) for the United States Army's Combat Medic Specialist. This specialty is open to males and females as well as allowing color vision deficient personnel.
Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) burial ground for the dead of the First World War in the Ypres Salient on the Western Front. After Tyne Cot, it is the second largest cemetery for Commonwealth forces in Belgium. Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery is located near Poperinge in the province of West Flanders. Most of those buried in the cemetery are war casualties who had been wounded near Ypres and later died in the four large Allied casualty clearing stations located in this area.
Tactical Combat Casualty Care is the standard of care in Prehospital Battlefield Medicine. The TCCC Guidelines are routinely updated and published by the Committee on Tactical Combat Casualty Care (CoTCCC), a component of the Joint Trauma System (JTS). TCCC was designed in the mid-'90s for the Special Operations medical community. Originally a Naval Special Warfare and USSOCOM Medical Research & Development initiative, TCCC developed battlefield appropriate and evidence-based casualty care based on injury patterns of previous conflicts. The original TCCC concept and guidelines were published in a Military Medicine Supplement in 1996. The primary intent of TCCC is to reduce preventable combat death through a means that allows a unit to complete its mission while providing the best possible care for casualties. Now it is a DOD course, conducted by NAEMT. TCCC or similar standards are used by most allied countries.
