Photo By Spc. Shelby Bickmore | Soldiers assigned to the 144th Medical Company carry a patient towards a UH-60 Black...... read more read more
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LEHI, Utah – The Utah National Guard’s 144th Medical Company (Area Support) held their training culmination and external evaluation at Camp Williams, Utah, June 5, 2026. The Soldiers received training on mass casualty events, treating various wounds, receiving patients, and medical evacuation.
This training gives unit personnel the opportunity to train for potential situations they may face on deployments, during natural disasters or high stress real world situations.
“Part of our job is setting up a Role Two Treatment area.” ” said Maj. Spencer Cline, the chief medical officer for the 144th.
A Role Two Treatment Facility is a step up from the basic care given by a combat medic. The facility is the middle ground between frontline medical treatment and full-scale hospitals. The medics in the facility can provide resuscitation, limited diagnostics such as X-rays and lab services, surgical capabilities and temporary holding before the patients can be safely evacuated.
Cline said the company’s goal is to be behind the front lines and provide medical care for Soldiers in austere environments. His unit is in place to have a treatment tent ready to receive casualties and administer care when appropriate.
“We’re trying to throw everything at our Soldiers to help them prepare for the mission,” Cline said.
Cline listed off times where the company has been called upon for their skills, including Hurricane Katrina, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
“It’s important to be ready to deploy and have those medical capabilities in areas that aren’t necessarily close to hospitals,” Cline said.
The unit had a wide variety of training equipment at their disposal throughout the event such as devices to simulate arterial bleeding, mannequins to practice intubating patients, various medical equipment for the training and the medical equipment the company will be taking on the deployment.
“This is our culminating point,” Cline said. “We’ve had a lot of training over the last 12 months to step it up and be ready for this training event.”
Over the course of their training, the unit has been running a variety of medical scenarios ranging from a runny or bloody nose to life threatening wounds.
Spc. Paige Ivie, a combat medic assigned to the 144th Medical Company, worked in the treatment tent of the training.
“We get patients from evacuation, and then we get to do further treatment,” Ivie said. “We get a lot of extra care options in our treatment tent.”
Once patients are stable, the 144th medics send them to patient hold where they can be monitored out of the way of the main treatment tent. The training scenario provides a controlled environment for the Soldiers to practice before they are sent to the field where mistakes can have catastrophic effects on those they are caring for.
The objective is to prepare Soldiers for when they may need to step up and take charge of a patient or in a medical area, either through administering care or even transportation from one area to another.
“Physically, it can be pretty taxing,” Ivie said. “You never know if you’re going to get a patient who’s 95 pounds or 250, so it’s nice to be physically prepared.”
Several Soldiers in the 144th work in the medical field outside of training with their unit. This allows them to share extra knowledge, skills, insight, and best practices.
“We have medics, but their day job is ICU nurse or working on an ambulance or civilian providers,” Cline said. “We have a good variety of specialties that are going to help us to have more success.”
As the 144th prepares for a potential deployment, the culmination exercise provided an opportunity to validate months of training and reinforce the unit's ability to deliver lifesaving care in challenging environments. The Utah National Guard routinely supports overseas deployment rotations and contingency operations around the world. Medical units such as the 144th play a critical role in those missions by providing emergency treatment, stabilizing casualties and coordinating medical evacuation for service members operating far from established medical facilities. Training exercises like the external evaluation help ensure the unit can rapidly deploy and integrate into larger military operations when called upon.
| Date Taken: | 06.07.2026 |
| Date Posted: | 06.11.2026 16:06 |
| Story ID: | 567071 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 90 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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