Bastion Role 3

Bastion Role 3 Hospital. When we were doing our WTP as we were heading out we had one of those touchy feely sessions and one of the questions that was asked was how would you rate your deployment on a scale of 1-10.  There were a lot of 5s and 6s, some 7 and eights but when it came to me I said without hesitation: 10/10. All the badness of the deployment: away from home, family, and the ugliness of war, couldn’t take away from what was done at BR3 and being able to be part of that experience. 

There was and still is a lot of criticism of how things were done at Bastion, mostly by the other American MTFs (Medical Treatment Facilities) in Afghanistan.  Mostly this was centered around “ oh that must be the way the British do it”, and especially the way we handled the multiple lower extremity amputation from IED blasts.  In the 7 months that I was there we saw thousands of trauma casualties and others and did a phenomenal number of operative cases, transfusing thousands of units of blood products. I said in one of my earlier posts that some called BR3 the busiest trauma center in the world.  In my time there, that was probably a true statement. We did close to 300 IED amputation casualties which amounted to probably well over 700 amputated limbs:  clearly the largest cohort of any MTF in the world.   In a time frame before me and during my time, a best practice approach was developed for the handling of these casualties which yielded results that were as good as or better than any other facility and with reduced blood loss.  Perhaps rather than criticize BR3, the other MTFs should look on how things were done there.  This was all done in an environment where no one really had any personal agendas. It was just a group of people with one common goal: BEST CARE.

This brings me to the real reason it was the experience it was.  I took over 2000 pictures while I was at Bastion and a sampling of the results is shown below.  The theme I think is evident: An extraordinary place doing extra ordinary work by a group of amazing people: A 10 out of 10.