Photo By Aimee Malone | Soldiers with the 228th Combat Support Hospital of Joint Base San Antonio, Texas,...... read more read more
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From Aug. 4-8, Regional Training Site (RTS)-Medical personnel at Fort McCoy helped a medical unit prepare for an upcoming deployment by hosting its culminating training event.
Col. Michael Yost, commander of the 228th Combat Support Hospital of Joint Base San Antonio, Texas, said the week at RTS-Medical was the culminating training event for his unit, which will deploy later this year to Kuwait.
“We’re here to test our operational processes and medical skills,” he said.
A lot of his Soldiers work in similar jobs to their military occupational specialties as civilians, so they don’t necessarily need to practice those skills, Yost said. However, the exercise lets them practice the processes used in the Army and work alongside each other and other units.
“Communication is key in any hospital and especially on the military side,” Yost said. “Just making sure you can communicate within your section and across the hospital. … This (training) is testing whether our standard operating procedures work, and if they don’t, we re-evaluate, and we update those operating procedures.”
RTS-Medical provides hospital equipment, infrastructure, space, and instruction for hospital center and medical personnel training. Units can start building a hospital from the ground up, or they can come in to an existing setup to train on both medical and hospital administration skills. RTS-Medical also typically sends teams to units to train them on medical equipment at their home locations, though this function has been curtailed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
RTS-Medical personnel are also trained in the art of moulage, which is making realistic-looking wounds out of makeup and prosthetics. Yost said the moulage really helped his Soldiers get into role-playing the medical scenarios they were assigned.
“All of the scenarios that are done here are things that have actually happened (downrange),” he said. “That moulage just makes it more realistic and much easier for the staff here to get into it and feel like they’re actually reacting to a patient and their symptoms and how to treat them.”
Yost praised the job that Fort McCoy staff members have done to help his unit during its predeployment training. The unit is conducting all of its predeployment training at Fort McCoy.
“Everyone here has done a great job of supporting us,” he said. “That’s the feedback I’ve gotten throughout.”
Yost said he also wanted to point out how the observer-controller/trainers with First Army helped unit members refine their skills during training.
“They’re subject matter experts in each of these MOSes. They look at what we’re doing and how we react to the scenarios and then evaluate how we do,” he said.
Chief Warrant Officer 2 Robert Holt, chief of medical maintenance with the 228th. His section supports all the medical equipment at the hospital.
“We fix, repair, help sustain readiness, make sure it’s safe for operator use – just overall make sure the equipment’s doing what it’s supposed to do,” he said.
“It’s been great,” Holt said. “Typically, the training is more geared toward the clinical staff and their operations, so we’re very fortunate to have a medical maintenance observer here with us who’s integrated us into the war game a little better.
During the simulated breakdown, a technician will make a piece of equipment fail, which gives the Soldiers the chance to actually fix the machine instead of simply deciding what they would do in a similar real-world situation. It provides hands-on experience for a portion of training that is sometimes largely notional.
“We’ve had simulated equipment go down during a mass casualty event, so that gave us a chance to exercise our abilities and react to the situation,” Holt said. “It tests us in almost a worst-case scenario to see how we’d react.”
Master Sgt. Jessica Perez-Dixon, a nutrition care specialist with the 228th, said the training has been a lot of help in letting her practice her skills before the unit deploys.
Her role is to help guide and advise Soldiers’ nutrition and dietary choices based on their health needs.
“The trainers throw a lot of different scenarios at you, ranging from basic nutrition screening to complex cases or acute cases, like heart disease or high cholesterol,” she said. “I don’t do this on the outside, so being able to practice and know what I’m doing when I actually get (overseas), it’s helped a lot.”
For RTS-Medical staff, it was the first chance to put new hospital equipment into action, which was received in March just before precautions for the COVID-19 pandemic began to take effect. The new equipment is the same style as the Soldiers will be using when deployed, which makes it easier to ensure Soldiers are fully prepared when they deploy.
“The RTS-MED team received a hospital center equipment fielding in March and have worked diligently to ensure the modernized equipment was ready to use during the 228th Combat Support Hospital culminating training event,” said Col. Cynthia Hopkins, the Fort McCoy RTS-Medical site director. “Our team of dedicated professionals worked tirelessly over the past few months to ensure newly fielded Temper Air-Supported tents, hospital equipment, and medical supplies were functionally packed and ready for use during this training event. I am extremely proud of my team’s accomplishments over the past few months.”
RTS-Medical, a tenant organization at Fort McCoy, is one of three regional training sites that serves Army Reserve units. Staff members train both active and reserve-component Soldiers in hospital support skills.
RTS-Medical also supports large-scale exercises such as Global Medic, which brings in service members from throughout the Department of Defense and other nations’ militaries.
| Date Taken: | 08.14.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 08.14.2020 14:04 |
| Story ID: | 376016 |
| Location: | FORT MCCOY, WI, US |
| Hometown: | SAN ANTONIO, TX, US |
| Web Views: | 1,304 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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