Medics test wartime readiness

  • Published
  • By 1st Lt. Monique Roux and Dan Neely
  • 919th Special Operations WIng Public Affairs
DUKE FIELD, Fla. --  Airmen from Duke Field’s 919th Special Operations Medical Squadron recently returned from completing annual training alongside Navy counterparts at Naval Medical Center Balboa in San Diego, California.

Twenty-one members of the medical team, including nurses, medical technicians, optometrists and dental technicians honed their wartime readiness skills through hands-on, real-world patient care at the NMC Balboa clinics and emergency room.

In addition to participating in patient care at NMC Balboa, six 919th SOMDS medical technicians participated in a Tactical Combat Casualty Care exercise. The San Diego TCCC was an aggressive combat simulation, providing invaluable wartime training which taught the participants to provide patient care under fire in a combat environment.

“This opportunity challenged us all and elevated our level of training,” said Maj. Francine Perkins, Officer in Charge of Immunizations for the squadron. “The array of different career fields that were able to participate made this an invaluable training opportunity.”

One of the participating medics found the TCCC environment so realistic she likened it to a busy Hollywood studio set.

“They had real life patients, pyro, smoke and a gunman running around,” said Master Sgt. Michele Godwin, 919th SOMDS aeromedical technician.

The overall TCCC course comprised four days of classroom and hands-on instruction culminating in a full-day exercise.

Godwin, a nurse in her civilian employment, said the training gave her a completely different perspective of medical care.

“It was providing immediate care under fire, moving patients out quickly to base camp and providing medical care until air evacuation arrived,” said Godwin. “It gave me a greater appreciation of what these people on the front line go through with care under fire with patients or each other. I think it was definitely beneficial to go through this training to enhance my wartime readiness skills. I think everyone in the military, whether medical or not, should have to go through this training.”

Staff Sgt. Mary McKay, a 919th SOMDS flight and operational medical technician, was unable to participate in the TCCC due to prior training obligations, but said she gained valuable training experience working in an emergency room and within the Navy’s equivalent of public health services.

She assisted the evaluations of two Navy vessels during a medical readiness inspection and later shadowed their deployment health section to evaluate and learn their processes.

“This was vital since the lessons I learned from San Diego directly impacts the deployment tempo we have at Duke,” McKay said. “I learned we all have similar problems, but if we trim the fat off of some processes, it will benefit everyone.”

McKay said deployment medicine is a big focus at her squadron, and making the processes easier and having less deployment curtailments is vital. She explained that the San Diego experience gave her and her fellow medics a window into how a different component handles small contingencies to large-scale mobilizations.

“Skills we hone in the ER make us better medics in a pinch because it's real life,” McKay said. “Training with mannequins is a nice place to start, but when lives are on the line and people are screaming in pain, you need to know how to react in those situations.

“You have to learn to be the calm presence in the room even if things are out of your hands,” she said. “Call it maturing as a medic, call it experience, whatever it is, we need more of it.”