Capt. Sharon House and Commander Virginia Damin
13 Feb 2020
Operational Knowledge Skills and Abilities Pilot
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (NNS) – The Naval Expeditionary Medical Training Institute (NEMTI) on Camp Pendleton, California, hosted clinical training with Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton (NHCP) as part of an initiative for operational knowledge, skills and abilities training.
As mandated by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 (NDAA FY17), each service is requested to maintain and measure critical wartime medical readiness skills and core competencies. Therefore, the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED) has established requirements to ensure personnel are prepared to perform in diverse operational settings. This includes clinical currency and competence, individual readiness and expeditionary platform skills and familiarization. NHCP has undergone a transformation to integrate the Navy Medicine Operational Training Center model into daily operations. A partnership was established to focus on the priorities of People, Platforms, Performance, and Power, and to ensure hospital personnel are afforded the opportunity to train in unique simulated operational environments.
The key objective is to integrate clinical skills within an operational environment. To apply those skills, personnel from NHCP utilized high fidelity patient simulators to replicate realistic wartime casualties. The scenarios capture the application of critical knowledge, skills and abilities of medical professionals needed to care for our injured warfighters. The team was immersed into NEMTI’s surface-ship environment simulator. The simulator incorporates the realistic constraints of a San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship operating room and includes the realistic acoustic of the ship's engines. The training focuses on the use of Joint Trauma System clinical practice guidelines in a resource limited environment.
The opportunity to expand this partnership extends beyond NHCP and NEMTI. As the initiative develops, operational skills will be interwoven into the training to include patient handoff with another operational unit and patient movement.
The purpose of NEMTI is to provide training on the assembly, disassembly and establishment of command structure, and basic operations of an Expeditionary Medical Facility ready for worldwide deployment, serves as the Navy's field test and evaluation center for deployable medical systems, equipment, and doctrine and instruction of the new EMF Collective Protection Systems. NEMTI is the "Center of Excellence" for tactical Combat Casualty Care and location of Expeditionary Medical Unit training for personnel deploying to Role II and Role III assignments in support of operational requirements.