The Department of Military and Emergency Medicine focuses
primarily upon teaching undergraduate medical students the broad based
academic discipline of miltary medicine. Its faculty consists of military
personnel drawn from each of the Uniformed Services and highly experienced
civilians. It provides subject matter experts to the basic and clinical
sciences years of medical school in order to integrate topics of military
medicine into the courses of the classical medical curriculum. Its goal
is to produce medical officers prepared for assignments in operational
medicine early in their military career.
Medical school courses taught by the department include:
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Overview of Military Medicine. This course introduces
students to military medicine through lectures and small group discussions.
Content includes distribution and classification of combat casualties,
impact of disease and non-battle injuries on readiness, battlefield healthcare,
combat stress reactions, and an introduction to nuclear, biological, and
chemical warfare.
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Combat Medical Skills. This course exposes students
to the level of medical training of the basic medic and corpsman.
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Military Applied Physiology. This course focuses on
the stressors common to the military environment such as cold, heat, radiation,
dysbaris, altitude sickness, and exercise, and their impact upon readiness.
Emphasis is placed on prevention of problems to allow mission accomplishment
in physiologically stressful environments.
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Military Medical Field Studies. This course includes
hands-on instruction in military communications, land navigation, weapons
handling, NBC defense, and preventive medicine. Upon completion of the
didactic phase, students deploy to Quantico Marine Corps Base for a one-week
leadership laboratory that presents them with numerous challenges at the
small group level which must be overcome through initiative and teamwork.
The field exercise schedule reemphasizes virtually all major teaching points
of the Military Medicine Overview, Combat Medical Skills, and Military
Applied Physiology courses. This exercise served as the model for the Navy's
Rapid Deployment Medical Force (RADMF) training program, and elements of
the course have been used in Public Health Service Disaster Medical Assistance
Team (DMAT) training.
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Introduction to Combat Casualty Care. Many previously
introduced topics are expanded upon during this course. Additionally, students
learn about personal protective equipment, the function of staff officers,
medical planning, and the management of resources and assets in a combat
medical environment.
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Military Contingency Medicine. This course is an intensive
fourth-year clerkship conducted at both the USUHS Bethesda Campus and Camp
Bullis, Texas. The first portion of the course consists of lectures and
laboratory sessions that include Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) and
Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS), as well as such topics as War Surgery,
Disaster Medicine, Refugee Management, and current operational medicine
issues. The second segment of the course is a round-the-clock, weeklong
field exercise using a war-fighting scenario. Students command and staff
pre-hospital medical units responsible for recovering, treating, and evacuating
approximately 100 moulaged casualties in each 24 hour period. Rotating
student leaders direct all medical care, supervise subordinates, respond
to tactical, administrative and logistical problems, and maintain personnel,
vehicles and other equipment. In addition to handling a realistic mix of
combat casualties, disease patients, battle fatigue cases, and enemy prisoners
of war, they are confronted with scenarios including tactical nuclear weapons,
chemical weapons, and multiple mass casualties. Students plan and conduct
multiple cross-country moves by ground and air, respond to ambushes and
aggressor attacks, and deal with visits from line commanders and media
representatives.
The department has established high quality consulting
and research programs through its Casualty Care Research Center (CCRC),
Human Performance Laboratory (HPL), and individual faculty. It provides
expert consultation for numerous government activities.
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CCRC. The CCRC is a center of excellence for research
and investigation of issues relating to injury control and casualty care.
It provides university students and other personnel with a disciplined,
educational, research experience in combat casualty care. It provides military
medical officers with the opportunity to engage in medical research that
has military relevance. It serves as a repostiory of resources relating
to injury control, injury epidemiology, and operational medicine, and it
serves as an inter-disciplinary focus within the Department of Defense
for all aspects of injury control and combat casualty care.Current research
includes development of a multimedia casualty care research database, development
of triage training instructional modules, assessment of penetrating injury
severity, medical support of counter-terrorism, emergency medical care
in austere environments, and application of military medical methodologies
to support federal, state, and local law enforcement operations.
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HPL. The laboratory's primary area of research involves
optimization of human performance through nutritional manipulations, the
role of trace elements in immune and endocrine function, effects of exercise
on trace element status, immune function and exercise, and gastrointestinal
function during exercise. Field studies conducted to date include protocols
on participants of the First Women's Olympic Marathon Trials, trainees
at the U.S. Navy SEAL Training Center in Coronado, new recruits in the
Israeli Defense Force, and regional participants of triathalons, marathons,
and 100 mile races. In addition, the HPL has conducted two field studies
at altitude--one in the mountains of Colorado and Wyoming and one on Mount
Everest in Nepal; both of these studies used investigated fumulated high
carbohydrate diets.
The deparment provides support for a diverse and wide range
of continuing medical education programs.
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Conferences. Within the department, the Grand Rounds
lecture series features speakers including prominent leaders and experts
in the field of military medicine and related disciplines. The department
coordinates several continuing education conferences sponsored by the University
to include the Annual Conference on Military Medicine and the Aviation
and Emergency Medicine Conference for the Seventh Medical Command in Germany.
The department has recently added a Center for Disaster Medicine that was
instrumental in developing the disaster/humanitarian assistance focused
agenda for the 1997 Conference on Military Medicine. In addition to coordinating
conferences, department faculty regularly lecture and present at residency
programs and military-disaster medicine conferences throughout the country.
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Courses.
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For several years, the department's CCRC has taken the nations's leading
role in developing courses for educating law enforcement agencies on providing
medical care in the tactical environment; its Counter-Narcotics
Tactical Operations Medical Support (CONTOMS) training program has
become the national standard for SWAT medics. In addition to teaching advanced
medical care in the tactical environment, the course also stresses the
importance of medical input into mission planning. This course was developed
jointly by the CCRC and the U.S. Park Service Police.
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Recently the department as contracted with the Defense Intelligence Agency's
Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center (AFMIC) to provide a recurring
two-week course titled, Introduction to Military Medicine for Intelligence
Analysts and Analyst Support Personnel. This course is designed to provide
intelligence personnel with the basic, fundamental understanding of military
medicine needed to more effectively perform analyses of medical infrastructures,
environmental hazards, endemic disease, and military medical units, facilities,
capabilities, and practices.
If you think the Department
of Military and Emergency Medicine can assist you in meeting a training
need or continuing education requirement, please contact its Chairman,
Craig H. Llewellyn, M.D., M.P.H., Colonel, U.S. Army (Ret).
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Department of Military and Emergency Medicine
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Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences
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4301 Jones Bridge Road
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Bethesda, MD 20814-4799
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Phone - (301) 295-9644, DSN - 295-9644
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Fax - (301) 295-6773
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