DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. —
The 436th Medical Group partnered with the 142nd Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron, Delaware Air National Guard Base, New Castle, Delaware, to assist with MEDIC-X training on Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, Aug. 9, 2023. The training consisted of onload and offload procedures for an AE on a C-17 Globemaster III and Military Acute Concussion Evaluation for 127 Team Dover medics.
MEDIC-X is the Air Force Surgeon General’s Multi-Capable Airmen initiative to ensure all military medical personnel, clinical and non-clinical, are equipped with life-sustaining skills needed for future conflicts with near-peer adversaries where resources may be limited.
“We coordinated with the 142nd AES to come in and teach our medics how to properly onload and offload patients from a fixed-wing aircraft,” said Lt. Col. Dino Quijano, 436th MDG chief nurse. “We have a lot of brand-new medics and even for those not new, a lot of them have never deployed, have never been around an aircraft, nor carried litters with patients.”
“In a deployed setting, transporting litter patients off an ambulance bus and onto an aircraft, and vice versa, is an important step in the aeromedical evacuation patient movement process,” he said. “As a prior AE flight nurse, I felt it was important for our medics to gain that realistic experience working with an actual AE team.”
Along with AE training, Team Dover medics also trained on how to perform MACE, which is a multimodal tool that assists providers in the assessment and diagnosis of a concussion. The MACE scorecard streamlines the assessment process so clinical and non-clinical medical Airmen can effectively care for a service member.
“It was important to get our members out there for some hands-on training,” said 2nd Lt. Henry Leighton, 436th MDG Medical Readiness flight commander. “When it’s just videos, or conceptual instruction, it doesn’t serve as a repeatable process which our people can use to inform their future actions in a combat setting.”
Providing this skillset to medics not involved in patient care, the 436th MDG creates MCA who will be able to assist in healthcare operations to include, medication procedures, pain level assessment, vital monitoring, respiratory care and critical emergency response.
“When our Airmen are deployed and resources are limited, our medics need to know how to perform some level of patient care,” said Master Sgt. Jason Jones, 436th MDG Medical Readiness flight chief. “In a challenging environment downrange, the priority is not going to be completing administrative tasks, it is going to be saving lives. We need to build that knowledge base and create muscle memory so that these life-sustaining proficiencies are instinctive to our medical warfighters.”
Although onloading and offloading patients from a fixed wing aircraft and MACE are only two of 52 required MEDIC-X skills to be exercised annually, Team Dover medics continue to learn new skills and maintain deployment readiness.
“The 142nd AES did an outstanding job in training our medics on that important MEDIC-X skill,” said Quijano. “We received some great feedback from our medics that the patient onload and offload training with the AE team was well-received, and for some, it put in perspective how much more than just being in the clinic, our roles as medics matter.”
