FORT CAVAZOS, Texas – Graduate medical education program resident physicians and physician assistant interns, dental residents, medics and medical professional subject matter experts from the Army, Navy, Airforce, National Guard and Reserve participated in the 12th iteration of Joint Emergency Medicine Exercise hosted by the Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center June 4-9.
Medical experts trained in an array of realistic scenarios on forward point of injury care, forward resuscitative surgery, critical care transportation on C130 aircraft, helicopters and ground ambulances, Role III hospital emergency and intensive care services, and a new addition this year, chemical environment medical services, in which trainees navigated treating patients in a chemically contaminated area.
Trainees were pushed throughout the week to experience success and failure together with partner nations.
The training helped them realize what is needed to function in an environment where military medical experts think the next major military engagements will push its personnel towards.
“The military health system requires a paradigm shift in how we prepare for combat,” said Lt. Col. Benjamin Donham, medical doctor and fellow, U.S. Army War College, Harvard University.
He described the U.S. military’s next possible conflicts operational environments as pretty typical, but vastly different, and requiring medical support for a very, highly lethal battlefield.
Sgt. Ingrid Jager, nurse, Royal Netherland Army, in her second year of JEMX, described the training as very realistic and expects this year’s team to learn together with her multinational partners.
“This is why our work matters, why we practice, and train,” she replied after hearing wounded warrior Derek Bailey talk about personal experiences of a being treated on the battlefield.
Her counterpart Cpl. Nichol Lamers, medic, Royal Netherland Army experienced this level of trauma care firsthand being deployed in Afghanistan and JEMX has evolved over the years to prepare medical personnel to do just that.
While JEMX is a capstone event, it is more appropriately viewed as a starting point for participants to carry the training philosophy with them and improve medical training across the force.
Maj. Vanessa Hannick, medical doctor, CRDAMC encourage participants to get in the mindset during and after the training to continually problem solve and learning to teach.
“We don’t often times in training give our medical personnel a problem where the answer isn’t in the book and make them figure out what they are going to do,” she said. “It’s important to practice that, because if we just give them the answer all the time when they get out by themselves, they will just feel like they’ve never had to solve that problem on their own.”
“It’s just so critically important to medicine and especially to our line medics who are going to be out there by themselves,” Hannick added.