Photo By Steven Galvan | Members of the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research Burn Flight Team pose for a...... read more read more
FORT DETRICK, Md. – Since its founding in 1951, the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research Burn Flight Team has conducted aeromedical evacuations for thousands of burn patients around the world. Renowned for its ability to deploy a fully equipped team of critical care specialists with just a few hours’ notice, the BFT relies on a rigorous training and education regimen to maintain its proficiency and readiness. No less important to that objective is the BFT’s commitment to provide training to other military medical forces to ensure they are ready and able to sustain the health, survivability, and lethality of the force in any scenario.
To accomplish that, the BFT participates in annual training exercises with active duty and National Guard units to deliver accurate, high-quality training in subjects such as stabilizing casualties at the point of injury, performing triage in mass casualty scenarios, executing patient evacuation in austere conditions, and managing surge operations in the emergency department. Such training provides valuable experience in medical interoperability that will materially increase the chances of survival for injured Warfighters and civilians.
“If the U.S. finds itself in a large-scale combat operation, we want to ensure the military medical community has the knowledge and resources to care for the critically ill burned patient,” says Maj. Stacey Johnson, the BFT’s clinical nurse officer-in-charge. “We support training exercises to train our partner forces and to inform them of the resources the Burn Flight Team and the USAISR Burn Center provide for the joint force.”
Recently, BFT members joined Air Force Critical Care Air Transport teams from the 59th Medical Wing, National Guard units from five states, and multiple civilian agencies including NASA to participate in the National Guard’s annual Air X training exercise – one of the largest civil-military aviation search and rescue training exercises in the nation. Working alongside the CCAT teams, the BFT flew six simulated critically ill patients from Kelly Field, located at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph, to Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base in Houston. They then transported the patients to Memorial Hermann Southeast Hospital in Houston by civilian medical transport helicopters, a military MEDEVAC unit, and ground ambulances.
Last month, another group of BFT members participated in the week-long Joint Emergency Medical Exercise 2025, the Army’s largest medical training exercise, which took place at Fort Hood, Texas. One of the key objectives of JEMX is to train military medical personnel in providing prolonged care close to the point of injury in LSCO scenarios where rapid evacuation may not be possible. During JEMX, the BFT provided training in the management of burn casualties to over 150 medics, corpsmen, and medical officers from the Royal Netherlands Army, the UAE Armed Forces, and the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.
“Some units are not aware that the DOD has a Burn Flight Team, so our presence at those trainings gives them a good idea of why we exist and what we do,” says Sgt. Knight Licos, a respiratory therapist who participated in his first Air X this year. “It’s also good experience for me. I recently graduated respiratory school and hadn’t been exposed to Role 1 and Role 2 care in a theater environment. Air X gave me an opportunity to better understand the types of care we normally don't encounter in a Role 4 facility like the USAISR Burn Center.”
Maj. Christopher Corkins, one of the BFT’s burn surgeons, agrees, noting that training exercises provide an invaluable opportunity to develop connections with military medical experts in other specialties as well as one’s own. Those connections benefit patients, too.
“Military medicine is a small world,” says Corkins. “I've met many people at Fort Sam Houston who I would see later on deployments. That plus the repetitive nature of the training and communication between the teams makes it easier for us to conduct handoffs and continue caring for the patient seamlessly.”
Training exercises also provide opportunities for the BFT to test their ability to anticipate and plan for the unexpected. For example, during this year’s Air X, the team flew the simulated patients from Kelly Field to Ellington Field aboard an Air Force C-17 Globemaster III cargo plane that had an aeromedical evacuation crew to help them install their medical equipment and a built-in oxygen system that they could plug it into. The return flight, however, took place on a smaller C-130 Hercules, which did not have an AE crew or a built-in oxygen system in the cargo area. Thanks to prior planning, they were well-practiced in installing and activating their own equipment on the plane, and they brought along sufficient portable oxygen to last the patients for the duration of the flight. That kind of preparation is crucial for successful urgent burn care missions in the real world – whether caring for the victim of an accident, a natural disaster, or combat.
“Every mission and every training exercise is different,” says Johnson. “You're going to a different location; you're communicating with different people. Knowing that in advance enables you to be ready to figure things out as you go, mission by mission, and then pass that knowledge down to your counterparts on the team so that everybody learns something. Because it’s guaranteed that you will learn something every time.”
| Date Taken: | 07.18.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 07.18.2025 13:23 |
| Story ID: | 543221 |
| Location: | FORT DETRICK, MARYLAND, US |
| Web Views: | 45 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, For USAISR Burn Flight Team, Training and Education are Part of the Mission, by Paul Lagasse, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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