Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC/TC3) is a patient care continuum and  set of guidelines and principles for providing medical care in a combat environment. It is specifically designed to address the unique challenges and circumstances of battlefield injuries. TCCC aims to minimize preventable deaths and morbidity by providing care that is practical, effective, and relevant to the tactical setting.

The success of TC3 lay in the scaled level of skills across 4 levels of provider suited to their role and environment;

1- All Service Member, basic skills for any role to stop massive bleeding, manage an airway, chest trauma, recognise head injury and prevent hypothermia.

2- Combat Life Saver, intermediate skills for non-medical personal employed in direct warfighting roles. Provided additional knowledge and skills interventions to manage airways and breathing, chest trauma,  immediate fluid access and common co-morbid battlefield injury management.

3- Combat Medic, advanced skills for those employed to or selected to assist in a medical support role to manage severely injured patients either individually, or as part of a team. High consequence advanced skills and procedures to potentially save life in seriously injured or degrading patients.

4- Combat Paramedic, expert knowledge and skills for those employed in special operations medical or specialist clinical support roles to manage the most critical and severely compromised patients.

TC3-Combat Medic is a specialist course suited to ADF Medics, Army All-Corp ‘Combat First Aiders’, Navy Ships Medical Emergency Teams (SMETs) or other positions that secondarily employed requiring advanced medical capacity and/or are likely to support medical clinicians in advanced skillsets. It teaches equipment and interventions at an advanced knowledge and skills level proven to best save life, preserve life and promote recovery, at point of injury.

TC3 is only effective and successful in its application through layered and scaled application of increasing clinical care through the patient care continuum.  By applying aggressive medical interventions early, precious time is ‘bought’ allowing for increasing clinical interventions only when needed through the patient evacuation.