Department of Military and Emergency Medicine
    Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences
     

    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:

  • 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.
  • Combat Medical Skills. This course exposes students to the level of medical training of the basic medic and corpsman.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Courses.
  • 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.
  • 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).
            Department of Military and Emergency Medicine
            Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences
            4301 Jones Bridge Road
            Bethesda, MD 20814-4799
            Phone - (301) 295-9644, DSN - 295-9644
            Fax - (301) 295-6773
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