The Chairmen of C-TECC are proud to announce that the Koshka Foundation for Safe Schools has accepted a liaison seat on the Board of Advisors, and that Kristina Anderson, the Executive Director of the Koshka Foundation, will be personally joining the Board of Advisors.

From the website www.KoshkaFoundation.org:
Founded after the school tragedy of Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007, the Koshka Foundation was started to ensure the memory of April 16th is continued in meaningful ways.Dedicated towards impacting school safety and student education initiatives, our vision is a world that strongly believes in the power of youth and awareness as the greatest assets to a safer future.

Often, as first responders, we get focused on the tactics and details of the high risk operations in which we respond, potentially losing sight of the fact that at the other end of the operation is a young girl whose biggest decision of the day was which shoes to wear to class. Our work and preparation for high threat medical response must account for their stories as well.

Ms. Anderson is a compelling and powerful speaker with a story of survival that should be heard by all. Our hope is that this liaison with the Koshka Foundation, as well as the honor of having Kristina at the table with us, will allow the voice of the survivors, as well as those lost, to be an integral part of our process.

The Board of Directors would like to thank you all for a very successful 2014 as well as an incredibly productive winter 2014 full committee meeting!

To recap for those of you who could not attend, the meeting at SOMA this year was extremely well attended, both by our members as well as many conference attendees. The support from SOMA this year was fantastic as always, as demonstrated by how easy it was to expand our room for 325 seats to 150 seats. Thank you again to the administration and directors for the SOMA scientific assembly.

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We are gearing up for next weeks meeting and are looking forward to seeing all of you at SOMA! This meeting, as with all meetings of the C-TECC, are open to the public. Although you do not have to register for the scientific assembly to attend our meeting, we highly recommend attending the full conference – the topics and sessions look very good this year, plus you can get your CME! Register here >

Our meeting is scheduled on Wednesday morning from 0730-1300 at in room 4 of the Tampa Convention Center.

Here is the tentative agenda:
0730-0745 Pledge of Allegiance and Introduction
0745-0815 First Care Provider initiative
0815-0845 UK Line9 Medic program
0845-0900 IAB report
0900-0930 XStat hemostatic tool
0930-1000 IV vs IO research
1000-1030 TECC trademark (Minch)
1030-1045 GW Continuing Training Grants Program Award
1045-1100 Public Comment
1100-1300 Guidelines Discussion and voting

• Language change proposal: adding Hot/Warm/Cold
• Review peds comments
• Working group proposal: Canine TECC
• Generic TECC slide deck resource

1300 Save Rounds and adjourn

As you can see, it will be a busy morning with a lot of good discussion as well as critical topics for the Committee as a whole to address. We look forward to seeing you there!

The December 2014 full committee meeting of the Committee for Tactical Emergency Casualty Care has been set for December 10th, 0730-1330, at the Special Operations Medical Association Scientific Assembly in Tampa, Florida.

Although you do not have to register to attend our meeting, we strongly recommend that you do register with SOMA as a conference attendee to have access to all of the fantastic educational opportunities as well as CME credits. It is one of, if not the, best operationally oriented medical conferences of the year.

We will be posting the agenda for our meeting in the next month or so, but anticipate excellent discussion around some proposed TECC language changes.

The SOMA conference website is www.http://www.specialoperationsmedicine.org/Pages/scientificassembly.aspx

The 2014 December Full Committee meeting will again be in conjunction with the Special Operations Medical Association Medical Conference in Tampa from December 8-11, 2014. The exact date and time of the TECC meeting during SOMA but should be in the next few weeks. Plan on attending this very informative conference as well as our open-door meeting. We want to hear your voice!

The 2014 TECC Guidelines update has been approved and released by the Committee. There have been changes to language regarding junctional hemorrhage, eye injuries, and triage. Make sure you are utilizing the most recent version of the Guidelines!

After much wrangling, we have finally confirmed a date for the next full committee meeting of the Committee for Tactical Emergency Care. Dr. Nelson Tang, a member of the Board of Directors, has generously offered to host this meeting through the Johns Hopkins Center for Law Enforcement Medicine in Baltimore, MD. The meeting will be held on his campus on Monday June 9 (full day), and Tuesday June 10 (half day). As always, the meeting on June 9th is open to the public. We encourage all first responders and other stakeholders to attend and participate in the discussions around the TECC guidelines. We want and need your feedback as we continue to develop the high threat operational medical guidelines. Feel free to contact the Committee with any questions.

Over the last 6 months, the Committee for Tactical Emergency Casualty Care through Dr. Josh Bobko and the special populations working group has been developing a specific set of pediatric TECC medical guidelines for use in high threat scenarios. Although pediatric patients are commonly involved and commonly injured, the distinct lack of evidence for the use of many trauma interventions in this population made it difficult to create a true evidenced-based set of guidelines. As such, lead by Dr. Bobko and using a combination of review of existing literature, current and anecdotal best practices, and based on pediatric specific physiology, this set of treatment guidelines was created through an expert consensus-based process.

These guidelines are draft only, and are being distributed for review and comment to the TECC stakeholders. As such, feel free to review and comment through the 'contact us' tab on the website. We will be discussing and finalizing these guidelines at the full Committee meeting in December.

v1 DRAFT Pediatric TECC Guidelines

This guide is a fire and emergency medical services (EMS) resource that can be used to support planning and preparation for active shooter and mass casualty incidents. These complex and demanding incidents may be well beyond the traditional training and experience of the majority of firefighters and emergency medical technicians. The U.S. Fire Administration offers this guide as one source of many available for the public safety community, but it takes into consideration the diverse local service levels available across America. In developing the guide, we consulted with individuals and groups engaged in fire and pre-hospital emergency medical services, law enforcement, and hospital medical and trauma care. We also consulted with public safety organizations and numerous federal agencies.

http://www.usfa.fema.gov/fireservice/ops_tactics/disasters/