Training the Medics

Yes, it's been a while since I've last the blog... Sorry. I wish I could say a lot has happened since my last post, but sadly, that's not really true. It's pretty much the same thing on a daily basis: work-out, go to work, go home, sit on the couch, go to bed, repeat. With the occasional variation for a weekend.

So I'll write about what's been occupying my time at work: how to train the medics.

We have about 25 junior medics (private first class-corporal), all of which are very bright, for junior medics. They were recruited for civil affairs by being at the top of their classes during Advanced Individual Training (AIT); once selected for civil affairs, they completed a seven week CAMS course (Civil Affairs Medical Specialist), which went over basic preventive medicine, environmental science, and veterinary medicine. More than half of them have gone to a paramedic course and are now certified paramedics. They're great at trauma care; unfortunately for that, most of what the medics are probably going to be encountering in Africa is going to be tropical medicine and not trauma.

Fortunately, I happen to be a little bit good at tropical medicine (and that's not just me saying that... The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene agrees, and gave me a certificate saying it).

So between the environmental science officer, the vet, and myself, we came up with the perfect (okay, not perfect, but decently good) training plan, with two hours lectures once a week, on Wednesdays from 2-4 pm. We presented this to the company commanders, but sadly, the presentation did not go as planned. The company commanders were concerned that we were trying to tell them what to do with their people, and told us that they'll get back to us with a plan for how they want us to train their medics.

That was over a month ago. Still no word on what that plan is.

In the meantime, we've been doing what we can to "unofficially" train the medics. I put "unofficially" in quotes, because everything is, actually, official (we keep careful records, because the medics need a certain number of hours of training a year to maintain their certifications), but just not without the approval and/or knowledge of the company commanders. Through the super-secret sergeant channels (that's what I call how all of the non-commissioned officers get things done), the senior medics who work in the aid station contact the senior medics in the company and tell them that we're going to do training, and if their junior medics are free, that they're welcome to attend. For unofficial training, we've so far done "stump the professor", where the medics asked me any question they had about diseases in Africa (on which they stumped me on one disease--guinea worm), and practicing inserting IVs, which Mary, the vet, ran (she even brought in her dog so the medics could practice on the dog as well as each other). Both went very well.

We've also had official trainings, which so far has consisted of one guest speaker, a Nigerian-born physician from the CDC. He came in to talk about his research on hepatitis that he's done in the Coastal Region of Georgia, and compared that to hepatitis trends around the world. Some of the statistics were a bit pedestrian, but overall, the medics were very attentive throughout and asked some good questions, so I'm proud of them. We have another presentation scheduled for a couple of weeks from now, when the dermatologist from Ft. Stewart is going to talk about tropical dermatology. Should be a good presentation.

Long story less long, training the medics to know what they need to know about tropical medicine, before they go to Africa, isn't easy, but we're finding a way to make it work.