It's difficult to deliver medical care here. It's dusty, it's noisy, it's dirty, and it's scary. It's also a little disconcerting, because once you finish patching up the wounded man, the young medic with you immediately turns and wants to videotape the firefight to post on his Facebook page. That's a generational thing that I could never really understand.
I would much prefer it if I could deliver care in my armoured ambulance, the Bison, which has everything I have in my level one ambulance here in Canada. Even better was delivering care at the FOB, where I have everything I need for that first half hour of trauma care. That's all I need to do, because in half an hour my ambulance comes to take them back to the Role 3 Hospital and outstanding care.
Just to give you an idea, this is not a helicopter crashing. This is a helicopter landing under fire to bring our wounded back directly from the battlefield. That's how good these pilots and machines are these days.
You heard a bit about the role I played in delivering ultrasound to Canadian emergency medicine. I did bring my machine along with me for my first tour. On my second tour, I actually convinced an ultrasound company to lend, for free, ultrasound machines to all of our FOBs for use on that tour.
I have to disagree a little bit with Colonel Tien here. I did teach this to my front-line medics, and I became convinced that with some brief and focused but intensive training, they could develop quite a facility with this technique.
That's the key message I want to leave with you from this oral presentation. These young medics, 28, 26, 24, and 22 years old, are extraordinarily competent. The training delivered to Canadian Forces combat medics these days is superlative.
I want to show you something here. This is what happens when three badly wounded Canadians land in the FOB all at once. Even if you don't have a medical eye and you don't speak French, I think you will all agree that this is a doctor and a half a dozen medics going about their work in a calm and professional manner.
[Video Presentation]