But here, there is no crash of bombs or heavy gunfire: the nurse and the anesthetist-resuscitator practice on a dummy, in the calm of a room at the European Institute for Health Training (IEF) in Metz , which co-organizes training with the Union of Medical Relief and Care Organizations (UOSSM).
They are a total of nine Ukrainian caregivers, five anesthetists-resuscitators, three intensive care nurses and a traumatologist surgeon, aged 24 to 40, to train for seven days with French specialists, to then become trainers themselves in medicine and first aid in their country.
“We are in the process of training trainers”, in order to open a war medicine training center in Lviv, western Ukraine, at the end of June, for civilian doctors.
The objective is that they can "know how to deal with the influx of victims" in a war situation, explains Raphaël Pitti, former military doctor and head of training within the UOSSM.
"Sort" the victims
Since the Russian invasion on February 24, "we need to have a lot of doctors, a lot of first aiders, who know what to do in the event of war injuries: we have to train as many doctors as possible in a very short time", emphasizes Artem Ahantsev, a 29-year-old anesthetist-resuscitator from Mariupol (south-eastern Ukraine).
After 20 minutes, the dummy victim is put on a stretcher after being intubated: a successful exercise for Artem and Mykola, supervised by Raphaël Pitti.
Next to them, the medical coordinator Yuriy Stepanovskyy translates the instructions and the debriefing of the simulation designed by Professor Pitti, who with the UOSSM, has trained in 11 years nearly 34,000 doctors, nurses and first aiders in Syria.
Nine Ukrainian medics taking part in war medicine training practice using an ultrasound machine on May 9, 2022 in Metz Jean-Christophe Verhaegen AFP
If he congratulates the two students for taking charge of the victim, he reminds them of a basic rule at the sight of the equipment scattered on the ground: put each instrument used in its place, "because if you have to leave very quickly, everything is already in place and we are not giving up equipment" he insists.
Among the skills learned here, decision-making protocols to "triage" the victims, that is to say assess their condition to clearly determine "those which are urgent from those which are not", then "stabilize them “before treating them, specifies Mr. Pitti, recognized specialist in war medicine.
Team spirit
“This training is an excellent opportunity to improve the quality of care in Ukraine”, abounds Igor Deyneka, 40-year-old anesthesiologist-resuscitator, originally from Rivne, in western Ukraine.
An opportunity for which he and his colleagues, eight men and one woman, had to obtain an exceptional authorization to leave the territory by the Ukrainian government.
Indeed, men under the age of 60, who can be mobilized in the army, and doctors, normally do not have the right to leave the country.
War medicine specialists Raphaël Pitti (in the 1st row, 2nd from the left) and Pierre Catoire (2nd row, 2nd from the left), supervise a group of Ukrainian caregivers who came to train in Metz on 9 May 2022 Jean-Christophe Verhaegen AFP
Igor served in the army between 2015 and 2016: deployed in a field hospital in the Lugansk region (eastern Ukraine), he acquired his first skills in war medicine.
In Metz, he "absorbs knowledge" in order to integrate "precise diagrams" to manage influxes of victims in the hospital: "it is essential to be ready in the event of incidents causing a massive number of injuries" .
And after four days of training, everyone already feels "like friends, like a big family", rejoices Igor, for whom the team spirit developing between them is "very important" to rescue at best the wounded in difficult conditions.
© 2022 AFP