Getting to Zero Preventable Deaths on the Battlefield

Womack Army Medical Center
Story by Twana Atkinson

Date: 06.10.2019
Posted: 06.10.2019 15:48
News ID: 326484
Getting to Zero Preventable Deaths on the Battlefield

WOMACK ARMY MEDICAL CENTER, FORT BRAGG, N.C. – (Updated) Womack Army Medical Center is working to reduce combat morbidity and mortality through their ‘Enhanced Paramedic Program’.
This 20-week program targets the 68W combat medic specialist, and the Navy corpsman and has been ongoing since January of 2018.
Retired Command Sgt. Maj. Uriah Popp the former WAMC Director of Prehospital Medical Training Programs who spearheaded the effort on the Enhanced Paramedic Program, stated that this program is part of a greater strategic effort to get to zero preventable death in the battlefield.
Popp stated that currently, 90 percent of combat fatalities occur in our fighting elements like the infantry. Since 2001, 25 percent of the service members who died of wounds, deaths have been deemed potentially preventable, and this percentage equates to nearly a thousand service members.
As the guidon was passed on to Command Sgt. Maj. Jody Stanley, she expressed the same passion about the program.
”I was very fortunate that my predecessor, CSM Uriah Popp, led extraordinary initiatives here at WAMC to capitalize on several opportunities to fill capability gaps for the medics in various units on and off Fort Bragg,” said Stanley. “One of which included a 20-week paramedic course.”
According to Stanley, to date, there have been over 150 personnel graduate the course that will return to their units possessing the critical skills and ability to perform a higher scope of care and ultimately contributing to zero preventable deaths on the battlefield.
The combat medic or corpsman is primarily responsible for providing emergency medical treatment at the point of injury, or where they are wounded on the battlefield.
However, the current military occupational specialty training track is based on an EMT basic curriculum. This curriculum served the military well during the last 18 years of conflict, but current and future conflicts will present challenges that may increase morbidity and mortality if not properly trained for.
Womack launched this initiative in support of the National Defense Authorization Act’s goal for prolonged care training and reducing preventable death.
“How can we prepare our medics for the unknown?” asked Stanley. “Perhaps increasing requisite knowledge and broadening their skillset. The ability to provide prolonged field care and delayed casualty management far forward has proven to decrease morbidity and mortality rates on the battlefield.”
Womack partnered with Fayetteville Technical Community College to provide medics the opportunity to earn and attend the Emergency Medical Training-Paramedic training.
These medics then receive critical care flight paramedic training and certification as well as the Delayed Evacuation Casualty Management.
Once credentialed they are then privileged as paramedics allowing them to sustain their newly acquired advanced skills within the Fort Bragg EMS and Womack infrastructures.
Womack has trained over a thousand medics from all military services in the past year, and plan to increase those numbers in the future.
The ‘Enhanced Paramedic Program’ aims to empower the conventional medic to provide field medical care beyond ‘doctrinal planning time’ in order to decrease patient mortality and morbidity, as well as equip them with Critical Care skills to provide a higher standard of care.
A majority of the medics and corpsman WAMC has trained over the past year are from our supported units in the 82nd Airborne Division, throughout 18th Airborne Corps, and the Corpsman supporting the Marine units at Camp Lejeune.
Sgt. Lauren Engelhardt appreciates the opportunity of attending the enhanced course and welcomed the challenge of the new responsibilities.
“I love that the training gives us more of the nursing aspect than trauma. I now
have assigned patients that I’m responsible for in the Emergency Department, as opposed to assisting as I had before the training,” she said.
Now that Engelhardt is a trained paramedic, she is assigned as a paramedic in Fort Bragg Emergency Medical Services, an opportunity she would not have had if she had not been through the course.
“As an Army Enlisted Senior Leader and the CSM for Womack Army Medical Center, I understand the need to continue filling the skills and knowledge gaps for our 68W medics,” said Stanley.
“As we continue to move towards an environment filled with so much uncertainty, it is imperative that we train and prepare our medics to operate within a very austere and constrained environment.”
In the recently released report, “The Operational Environment and the Changing Character of Future Warfare,” U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command officials outlined what warfare over the next few decades may look like.
Between now and 2035, TRADOC expects that there will be an era of accelerated human progress.
There will be a time where “adversaries can take advantage of new technologies, new doctrine and revised strategic concepts to effectively challenge U.S. military forces across multiple domains,” the paper said.
“There are several initiatives like the K.I.A. Reductions and Enhanced Lethality that have been deem important by legislation. Womack is supporting those initiatives by revamping the training of our combat medics to increase survivability and readiness,” said Popp.