SAN DIEGO – (Dec. 02, 2019) Military Sealift Command (MSC) hospital ship USNS Mercy’s (T-AH 19) kicked off the quarterly Mercy Exercise (MERCEX) Dec. 2nd.
The pier side exercise will consist of more than 300 embarked Sailors, Soldiers, and Airmen who will participate in the exercises, trainings, and drills throughout the week.
“It is critical for the Mercy to conduct these exercises,” said Capt. John Rotruck, Mercy’s commanding officer. “Our goal is to ‘train like we fight’, so our crew can provide the best health service support to our joint warfighters. MERCEX exercises get our crew in the mindset.”
Mercy crew will participate in familiarization with Joint Trauma System clinical practice guidelines for the care of burn-injured patients, Tactical Combat Causality Care (TCCC), flight deck drills, and trainings and lectures to prepare the ship in case of a Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HA/DR) situation.
“Having quarterly MERCEX's is important because it brings all of the members assigned to the platform together and puts them through the motions and pressure’s they could face if the ship were to be activated for a combat or HA/DR response,” said Capt. William Scouten, Mercy’s executive officer. “Sailors, Soldiers, and Airmen can go through online training or classroom training all day, but until they are put in the real life situations, they might not fully grasp the concepts. MERCEXs help them with that.”
When called upon, the Mercy is expected to deploy within five days to provide scalable role three medical and surgical care across a broad range of specialties. Mercy does so while serving as an afloat theater hospitalization capability, all in support of the joint warfighter engaged in the full range of military operations.
MERCEX keeps both the MSC merchant mariners and service members up to par on their skills and keeps them ready to deploy in a moments call to anywhere in the world.
Mercy is currently operating pier side in San Diego for Mercy Exercise 20-1. Mercy is one of two hospital ships owned and operated by Military Sealift Command. Mercy conducts operations in the Pacific area of responsibility under the guidance of U.S. Pacific Command and Commander Pacific Fleet.