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FORT MCCOY, Wis. - Soldiers going to war have to deal with several medical factors. While protection from injury is primary, if they are injured, the better healthcare they can get increases there chance of survival.
During Global Medic 15, here, June 6-27, the U.S. Army Reserve Medical Readiness and Training Command provided an extensive medical training opportunity for military medical professionals to train together and better develop those livesaving skills.
Global Medic is the premier medical field training event in the Department of Defense and is the only joint accredited exercise conceived, planned, and executed by the U.S. Army Reserve. During Global Medic, service members from multiple DOD branches and allied nations, train together in a joint force environment, further strengthening their abilities to serve together around the globe.
“It's really a special opportunity to work with the reserve component in this type of exercise and produce the Total Force integration,” said Col. Ronald Smith 62nd Medical Brigade, commander.
“Global Medic is particularly unique because not only is it reserve and active component but it also includes the joint aspect, with the Air Force providing a lot of the evacuations, as well as the Navy, which is running one of the hospitals,” Smith said.
As mirrored in a deployed environment, partnerships between many forces were common, all working to achieve the same goal and learning from each other. The goal for training in Global Medic highlighted all the combined force aspects.
“We've also taken it to a new level with the incorporation of coalition partners, the British and the Canadians, so that it is really a combined, joint, total force, integration exercise,” Smith added.
Unlike the regular combat training centers, where the war-fighter has the predominant attention of all the resources, at Global Medic, the medical and sustainment community work together as if they were deployed, according to Smith.
“We stress them inside a larger construct of combat service support, so the same organizations and people they are going to see on the battle space down range, they'll see in this exercise, that are both medical and non-medical,” said Brig. Gen. Michael C. O'Guinn, Medical Readiness and Training Command, commanding general.
“Food, fuel, water, and everything else that we rely on down range for somebody to provide to us, is a realistic combat scenario, in the Global Medic exercise,” O'Guinn said.
What the Medical Readiness and Training Command brings from the NCO (non-commissioned officer) perspective is the actual hands-on, realistic training, that the Soldiers only really get in theatre, according to Command Sgt. Maj. Marlo Cross, Medical Readiness and Training Command.
“They get to utilize not only the medical piece of it, they get to exercise the leader development, they get the adrenaline rush, they get all that real-world experience that you can't get anywhere else,” said Cross.
When treating Soldiers on the battlefield, the expertise and skill of the medic is important. For Army Reserve medics who may otherwise not have a chance to hone those skills, Global Medic provides them the opportunity to practice what they have learned.
Cross said that approximately 60 percent of his enlisted Soldiers do not practice a medical trade or profession in their civilian careers.
“They range from school teachers to bus drivers, and one of the problems that we have is that they don't get a chance to practice that medical trade every day,” said Cross.
This exercise provides a platform for them to sharpen their skills, in order to keep those assets alive, according to Cross.
While the Army Reserve Soldiers participating in the exercise live the dual lives of a Warrior-Citizen – balancing both military and civilian obligations – the execution of Global Medic did not go unnoticed, especially in Smith’s eyes. He noted the Army Reserve exercise planners had about 12 days to prepare for the exercise.
“So to me it's incredibly remarkable that people who have full-time jobs in the civilian sector could also, in a full-time way, produce the similar standards that we have in the active duty – the mobilization effort to make it to this exercise, set-up, and perform in an incredible way,” Smith said.
Fort McCoy provided an ample location to run the exercise, where the Soldiers set-up fully operated forward operating bases throughout the installation.
“Here at Fort McCoy, with the training venue we have, you can provide an environment where the Soldiers have to come in, set up their task force, get everything all ready for the exercise, before they start to do the casualty play,” said O'Guinn. “It really stresses in and forces the expeditionary medicine mindset of coming in, falling in on nothing, and setting it up and getting it operationally prepared.”
To better prepare the medical Soldiers for different war-time scenarios, the MRTC also replicates the Global Medic exercise at Fort Gordon, Georgia and Camp Parks, in Fort Hunter-Liggett, California, with the intention to provide different scenarios and terrains for those audiences, according to O'Quinn.
“On top of that we also do individual sustainment training through the Regional Training Sites medical. We have three across the command and we do individual MOS (military occupational specialty) sustainment as well as help prepare units and teams get ready for the exercise,” O'Guinn said.
To coincide with the real-world training for their Soldiers, the MRTC also provides training supplies to fully engage the medical staff.
“The cut suit that we employ here provides a great team training, not only for the operating room suite, where it gets a lot of the work, but for the emergency staff and first responders,” O'Guinn said. “It has a live patient that wears the cut suit so the patient can provide real-world feedback on pain and anything else, so you just don't have a mannequin that is non-responsive.”
The teams of joint forces, and their coalition partners worked fluidly, navigating their way through small hurdles in the learning gaps experienced with different military cultures.
“In Afghanistan I commanded a small joint-staff hospital,” O’Guinn said. “Half my staff was Air-force, the other was Army Reserve. That point, in that battle space, was the first time we really trained with the Air Force, so it's not the best time to start to learn another service, their culture, and how they operate.”
“Global Medic today, we do that right now, training to get to know the cultures of the different services as well as our international partners, what we call things, how they like to operate, all that in peace time so we're not having to do discovery learning down range in the worst conditions possible,” O'Guinn added.
Gregg Stevens, deputy to the commanding general of the U.S. Army Medical Department Center and School, Fort Sam Houston, Texas, was one of many visitors viewing the exercise at Fort McCoy, taking in the interaction between the military groups, and leaving with an even stronger conviction on the medical Soldiers role in health readiness.
“I like the role of the Medical Readiness and Training Command, because it's all about readiness, even when you say the training part of the name it still talks about readiness,” said Stevens. “That's what we're here for.”
“Health readiness is the surgeon general's primary priority, it's the very first priority she has, so the more we can do to keep people healthy and ready, the better off we will be,” Stevens said.
Seeing the Soldiers, work together, react to various scenarios, and participate with a level of professionalism in the Global Medic exercise made Stevens recall a fond message he received about the role medics play in the lives of service members.
“I have a friend who is an Air Force nurse, and her name is Lynn Taylor, and Lynn was stationed with us at Fort Sam Houston when we were building the Medical Education and Training Campus, then she got deployed,” Stevens Said. “When she came back I saw her down at the coffee shop and I went over to give her a hug, and before I could even hug her, she put a finger in my chest and said 'Army Medics save lives everyday! I saw 1,153 evacuations, and if I ever got hurt, and looked up and saw an Army Medic, I knew I was going to make it. That's Army medicine and military medicine can build on that for success.'”
| Date Taken: | 06.23.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 06.23.2015 13:43 |
| Story ID: | 167790 |
| Location: | FORT MCCOY, WI, US |
| Web Views: | 435 |
| Downloads: | 4 |
This work, Global Medic: The building block of military medicine, by Brian Godette, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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