TEMS — Tactical Emergency Medical Services
When a high-risk operation goes wrong, an ordinary ambulance cannot reach the casualty — it has to wait until the scene is declared safe. That wait is measured in exactly the minutes that decide whether someone survives a major bleed. Tactical Emergency Medical Support puts a trained medic inside the operation instead of outside it.
How you get this
Quoted per job or per contract — no membership required. Tell us the dates, the headcount, and the location, and we will price it.
TEMS is a recognised discipline rather than an add-on. The National Tactical Officers Association defines it as the mission planning, preventive care, and medical treatment provided during high-risk and extended law enforcement operations. It works precisely because the medic is part of the team, not a resource parked at the perimeter.
The model divides a scene into zones. In the hot zone, under direct threat, the only medicine that matters is stopping catastrophic bleeding. In the warm zone — danger possible but not immediate — a medic can do considerably more: airway, chest injury, and haemorrhage control. In the cold zone, care becomes conventional. Knowing which zone you are standing in, and what is appropriate there, is the entire skill.
The protocols come from Tactical Combat Casualty Care, developed by the United States military and adapted for civilian use. They exist because the leading causes of preventable death in these situations — extremity haemorrhage, tension pneumothorax, airway obstruction — are all survivable when treated within minutes by somebody who is already present.
Our people train to these standards, and we teach them. To be clear about the boundary: TEMS does not replace EMS. It complements an operation so that the medical plan exists before the door goes in, rather than being improvised afterwards.
What this includes
- Medic embedded with the tactical element
- Mission medical planning and threat assessment
- Care under fire and warm-zone treatment
- Haemorrhage control, airway, and chest injury management
- Casualty extraction and evacuation planning
- Preventive care for team members on extended operations
- TCCC and TECC-based protocols
- Training delivered to your team