The Prolonged Casualty Care (PCC) Guidelines are the standard of care for developing and sustaining Department of Defense (DoD) programs required to enhance confidence, interoperability, and common trust among all PCC adept personnel, but first, Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC)¹ and how it relates to PCC.
TCCC serves as the DoD standard of care for non-medical and medical first responders.² The concepts outlined within the TCCC guidelines are prerequisite to developing and implementing capable PCC programs. TCCC provides a “principles-based” approach to casualty management that is applicable to trauma and disease non-battle injury patients.
The PCC mneumonic “MARC2H3-PAWS-L” helps guide users through what to consider after all TCCC interventions have been effectively performed:
1.Address and reassess all immediate life threats and interventions, per current TCCC guidelines, before moving onto PCC considerations.
2.Re-triage casualties and resources, as required, using appropriate triage decision tools.
3.Confirm notifications of the incident, telemedicine, and requests for evacuation were sent and received through the proper channels. This must be evaluated no later than the “C-Communications” in MARC2H3-PAWS-L.
4.When in doubt refer to the initial assessment and treatments per TCCC guidelines.
Note: The first action, within every PCC role-based guideline category, is to complete basic TCCC management.¹
The primary goal in PCC is to get out of PCC; thus, operational and medical planning should avoid categorizing PCC as the primary medical support capability or control factor during deliberate risk assessment. However, an effective medical plan should always consider PCC as a contingency.¹
The Committee on TCCC and PCC-WG advocate for the following: