Role in Boston Marathon bombing:
Claims to have been in the medical tent.

What they claim to have observed:
"At the first blast site,[another doctor] saw bodies piled on top of each other in an area maybe 20 feet by 40 feet...

...An injured woman — I couldn't tell whether she was conscious — lay on the stretcher, her legs entirely blown off. Blood poured out of the arteries of her torso; I saw shredded arteries, veins, ragged tissue and muscle....

“Clear the aisles!” Andersen called. More victims followed: someone whose legs had been charred black, another man with a foot full of metal shrapnel, a third with white bone shining through the thigh. I watched in shock as the victims were rushed down the center aisle to ambulances at the far end of the tent.

Many of us barely laid our hands on anyone. We had no trauma surgeons or supplies of blood products; tourniquets had already been applied; CPR had already been performed...many of us watched these passing victims in a kind of idle horror, with no idea how to help.

I drifted among the beds, ashamed that there was no other skill I could contribute. Nearly every physician I saw looked back at me with the same numb, futile expression..."

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1305299

Questions:

• Why does your description of the first blast site - "bodies piled on top of each other in an area of maybe 20 feet by 40 feet" - fail to conform to any known photographic image of the site, even those taken immediately after the explosion?
  
  
• Who was the double amputee woman?
  
  
• Did she survive?
  
  
• Do you know why such severely injured patients were being brought to an under-prepared medical tent for triage instead of being triaged on the spot and moved straight to an ER in the usual way?
  
  
• As a physician are you not afraid this might have cost the lives of the three who died, and severely impaired the full recovery of others?
  
  
• Do you think the families of these victims should sue those who implemented this plan of treating severe trauma in a first aid tent?

Role in Boston Marathon bombing:
Claims to have been in the medical tent and to have been with Krystle Campbell when she died.

What they claim to have observed:
April 16:
"One of his first patients was a young woman, he thinks maybe 20 or 22 years old, whose abdomen was torn open. Her left leg was broken and facing the wrong way and she wasn't breathing. He and his colleagues did CPR on her and kept checking for a pulse, but there was none. They stopped when they realized it was futile."
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/16/us...ombings-nurses

April 26:
"...a woman arrived in critical condition, struggling to breathe...Segatore scanned her wounds, mostly on the left side of her body. One leg was twisted backwards, and she had a wound near her left hip. She had black markings on her head, possibly residue from being so close to the blast.
She had already been given several minutes of CPR by those who rushed her into the tent. Segatore offered her comforting words before taking over CPR.
I'm a nurse, he told her. You're in a tent at the finish line.
He tried to resuscitate her. They stopped CPR briefly to hook up a heart monitor. The screen showed squiggly lines, but the heart wasn't pumping blood. There was no pulse. The physician said to stop. "We knew what we had," Segatore said..."
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/22/he...rst-responders


Questions:

• Why on April 16 did you claim Krystle Campbell's abdomen was "torn open" when it was not?
  
  
• Why did you later drop this claim in favor of a vague story of a wound "near her left hip'?
  
  
• Why on one story do you claim Krystle was conscious and in another that she was unresponsive? As an RN how could you be unsure of a factor as important as this?
  
  
• Why do you claim her leg was turned backwards when it does not appear to be in any condition remotely like this in the one clear photograph we have of her?
  
  
• As a nurse with 18-yrs experience, are you in the habit of referring to the output from a heart monitor as "squiggly lines"?

Role in Boston Marathon bombing:
Claims to have been in the medical tent. Says the experience was similar to his tour of duty in Iraq.
http://www.nurseuncut.com.au/nurses-of-boston/

Role in Boston Marathon bombing:
Claims to have been in the medical tent. http://www.nationalnursesunited.org/...boston-bombing

Role in Boston Marathon bombing:
Claims to have been at the medical tent prior to the bombing and to have rushed out to triage the victims. Like Asaiante he made a point of comparing the scene to a "war zone." http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/0...orrific-scene/

What they claim to have observed:
"I noticed immediately that people were lying in heaps, their legs either blown off, severely wounded or deformed completely...

One woman, who had sustained severe injuries to the back of her legs, was urging medical personnel to evacuate her husband, who had lost his leg around the knee. Two women Levine believed to be friends were laying in a heap together, their legs extremely deformed, as they desperately tried to get loved ones on the phone."

Questions:

• Who were these people? Can we identify them as any known victims?

Role in Boston Marathon bombing:
Claims to have been at the medical tent and to have treated Krystle Campbell.http://www.msnewsnow.com/story/22008...n-medical-tent

What they claim to have observed:
"The first 10 to 20 were many gruesome injuries that I, of course, would not have ever seen as a cardiologist," Guynes explained.

Guynes' section helped stabilize those who didn't have life-threatening injuries. But other doctors were calling for assistance throughout the tent.

"I did have the opportunity to try to help a lady. Krystle Campbell, I believe is her name, who did ultimately pass away, unfortunately. She was already in shock and had bled a great deal before she made it into the tent. Her face, I've seen it on television. She looks completely different than when I saw her in the tent," said Guynes.

Questions:

• How usual is it for out of town physicians to be part of the Boston Marathon Medical team? And who invited you to join?
  
  
• How many medical people worked on Krystle Campbell altogether?
  
  
• As a physician do you wonder - and were you told - why severely injured patients were transferred to an inadequately prepared first aid tent rather than being taken to hospital asap?

Role in Boston Marathon bombing:
Claims to have been at the medical tent and helped treat severely injured victims.
http://bolingbrook.patch.com/article...hon-explosions

What they claim to have observed:
"The BAA medical teams and Boston EMS were amazing," Hirschman said. "They immediately converted the tent into a mass casualty triage center and organized us into teams to assist in stabilizing the injured. Despite the harrowing and gruesome images I will always carry with me, I also remember the true heroes of the day - the Boston EMS, the athletes and the brave injured.".

Questions:

• (the same question we ask every MD) As a physician do you wonder - and were you told - why severely injured patients were transferred to an inadequately prepared first aid tent rather than being taken to hospital asap?

Role in Boston Marathon bombing:
Claims to have been working in "Medical Tent A"
http://tewksbury.patch.com/articles/...ike-a-war-zone

What they claim to have observed:
In moments, Tent A transformed from a post-race triage unit, dealing with dehydration and the loss of electrolytes, to a full-blown trauma unit. Scores of casualties were brought in for emergency care. It was unlike anything the seasoned nurse had ever experienced.

"I had worked in an ER, so I'd seen (traumatic) injuries, but nothing like this. There was just lots and lots and lots of damage," said Giroux. "There were two people who were (declared) dead in Tent A. There were traumatic amputations, one man with both legs blown off by the explosion. There were people impaled by metal and glass -- compound fractures. It was like a war zone."

When children began being brought in for treatment, Giroux turned her attention toward them, putting her skills as a pediatric nurse to good use...

Questions:

• How many children did you treat and what injuries did they sustain?
  
  
• Who were the two people who died in "tent A"? Was there a "tent B"? If so, where were they in relation to each other?
  
  
• Are you claiming that in all your time in the ER you never witnessed a severe road traffic accident, industrial accident, point-blank shot gun wound, or any physical injury comparable with those you witnessed during this incident? Do you not consider that rather unusual?
  

Role in Boston Marathon bombing:
Claims to have been working in medical tent and to have been sent out to "triage" victims on site.
http://www.legislativegazette.com/Ar...-Marathon.html

What they claim to have observed:
"Kilby called the transition between treating runners and triage "instantaneous" saying there were perhaps a few moments of chaos among the doctors, but they transitioned quickly.

'Triage was set up in three different levels depending on how critically ill a patient is. Level one, the most grave, involved patients who were unconscious, having respiratory trouble, cardiovascular troubles and a large amount of bleeding that could cause either cardiovascular or respiratory difficulty. Level three, on the other hand, targeted people who were awake and alert but have an obvious injury, but their neurological and cardiovascular status was stable.'

The tent Kilby and her team were working in was 75 to 100 yards away from the finish line, close to where the initial blast occurred. Kilby was immediately put in charge of the second layer of triage toward the front of the medical tent.

'There were two doctors stationed outside of the medical tent and they would either triage people to my section, in the chairs or straight into the medical tent," Kilby said. "Essentially my job was to see if people really needed to be there or to get them on their way and give them a little bit more time to decide what was going on with them. I was right at the entrance to the medical tent.'"


Questions:

• Given the fact tourniquets had already been applied and that there were no blood products in the medical tent, how were the victims of major hemorrhage to be treated there? What could be done for them there that could not be done better in an ambulance on the way to hospital?
  
  
• What was the rationale behind attempting to treat people with potential "neurological, cardiovascular" and airway trauma in a first aid tent? What could be done for them there that could not be done better in an ambulance on the way to hospital?
  
  
• As a physician were you not concerned that this unusual method of handling severe casualties might result in unnecessary deaths?
  

Role in Boston Marathon bombing:
Claims to have been with the EMS in the medical tent.
http://www.legislativegazette.com/Ar...-Marathon.html

What they claim to have observed:
"The first victim to come into the tent was an image I would never forget: a young man was wheeled in with both of his legs amputated by the blast. He was awake, and had mere strands of flesh hanging down from both of his legs [Bauman]. It was surreal... It was mass pandemonium. Triage sections were set up in the tent so that the victims with more severe injuries would be transported first. A subsection of the tent was assigned as the morgue.

I snapped into gear. I had the training, and now I just had to use it. I walked up to one of the victims awaiting transport(?). He already had tourniquets on both of his leg amputations, and the bleeding was controlled. I started an IV and hung fluids. But what else could I do for this man? He needed surgery and we could not do that in the tent. There were four other doctors and nurses around his stretcher, so I stepped back for a moment to collect my thoughts. Could this all be real? Or was this just a horrible nightmare that I would surface from soon?

...I then moved over to the Level 3 section of the tent. I found an adolescent girl and her mother who each sustained injuries to both legs. The girl was panicking that she would lose her legs. I reassured her. I started caring for the girl and her mother. I put in IVs, reviewed their injuries, and splinted their legs for transport. I even started taking a blood pressure on the mother, when I soon realized that the number is meaningless in the chaos of a mass-casualty incident.

About 25 minutes after the blast, we had all 97 of the blast victims who came through our tent transported to hospitals. We transferred the remaining runners to Medical Tent B. Shortly after, the police moved us out of the tent and sectioned the road off as a crime scene. I heard another bomb go off, but was reassured by another volunteer that it was a controlled detonation by Boston police.
"


Questions:

• Was the man you applied an IV to the same double amputee you described earlier? Was this Jeff Bauman? Why was such a severely injured man "awaiting transport" and relying on you to wander over and start an IV? Why had he not been transported to hospital immediately?
  
  
• As an RN why would you consider a patient's blood pressure to be "meaningless in the chaos of a mass-casualty incident"? Why would you not be aware that her b/p was a vital indicator of how badly she was bleeding out?
  
  
• What was the rationale behind attempting to treat people with potential "neurological, cardiovascular" and airway trauma in a first aid tent? What could be done for them there that could not be done better in an ambulance on the way to hospital?
  
  
• As a nurse were you not concerned that the delays in emergency care caused by treating severe trauma in an inadequately prepared medical tent might result in unnecessary deaths?
  

Role in Boston Marathon bombing:
Claims to have been with the EMS in the medical tent.
http://byond.phablettrend.com/marath...seen-usa-today

What they claim to have observed:
...Three people carried in a woman. One of her legs was blown off. Someone was holding it. The woman was “dripping blood all over” and “wailing in pain,” Coletta says. “I have never seen anything like that,” she says. “I will always remember that."

“When people came in, we used coats, belts, anything we could to stop the bleeding,” she says. One woman had a life-threatening injury to her heel, bleeding profusely from an artery, Coletta says. “Debris from the blast must have also hit her in the mouth, because her lips were also bleeding.” A man’s belt was used on the woman’s thigh to stop the bleeding, and Coletta dressed the heel wound.

She assisted another woman with a broken leg who had a tibia bone sticking through the skin. Coletta says she held the wounded leg while waiting for EMS personnel to come with a splint. It was the first time she had ever seen a bone sticking out of someone’s skin, she says. Coletta also tended to a young man with two broken legs who was “crying a bit and in shock.” He was shaking and blankets were put around him. “It looked like he had lost a lot of blood and something had crushed his ribs,” she says. “He had indentations in his chest.’ She assisted at least two other people with less serious injuries — one bleeding from an arm injury and one with a facial injury.

Medical workers set up a morgue in the back of the tent where, two hours earlier, Coletta had a pleasant lunch with nursing colleagues. She says an adult who died in the bombing was on a cot, covered by a sheet. “It absolutely had an effect on me,” Coletta says. “It froze me. I didn’t know whether to go over to the person or get back to assisting others.” She wonders whether the body was a person who had been in cardiac arrest, carried on a stretcher as EMS workers pounded on the chest.
"


Questions:

• Can you identify the woman with one leg blown off, the woman with the open tib fracture and the man with two broke legs?
  
  
• Using a belt as a tourniquet is standard, but as an RN you must be aware that a "coat" would be useless as a method to "stop the bleeding," so why were you and other trained personnel attempting to use such a thing for the purpose? Why did you not obey your training and use bandages, scarves, or anything that could be tied or twisted appropriately?
  
  
• If you are indeed a qualified nurse, isn't it quite strange that you had never seen a traumatic amputation before? Isn't it even stranger that you had never seen an open tibia fracture? Did you never work in orthopedics, or an ER? Did you never even study trauma as part of your training? Don't you think describing an open fracture as a "bone sticking out of someone's skin." is an odd way for a trained RN to talk?
  
  
  
• You also say that the sight of a dead body covered by a sheet "froze" you. Are you claiming that you never saw a dead body before either? Would it be fair to suggest at this point that your training sounds to have been a bit lacking in some major areas?