Opportunity to Contribute to USU Research Project

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Introduction:

Military medicine often requires providing advanced care in challenging environments with limited resources and personnel. Small, mobile surgical teams play a crucial role in bridging the gap between point-of-injury and definitive care. In a recent position statement by the Committee on Surgical Combat Casualty Care (CoSCCC), one of the concerns with Single-Surgeon Teams (as one model of the small military surgical teams) was the lack of standardized team composition and training. A key recommendation was to incorporate “cross-discipline training for skill redundancy in essential functions.” Despite this statement, there does not seem to be a standardized training curriculum or model specifically for these teams. As a result, teams frequently conduct their own internal cross training according to their own capabilities and mission requirements. 

This research aims to understand how various small military surgical teams design, organize, and evaluate their cross-discipline training programs. 

Your Participation:

We are seeking to interview military healthcare professionals from various specialties with experience on small military surgical teams. Your insights into your team’s training experiences, including curriculum development, training methodologies, assessment strategies, and readiness implications will be invaluable to this research.

Participation involves a one-time, approximately 60-90-minute, confidential focus group interview. Focus groups will be specialty-specific in order to facilitate group discussion among peers and will include the following professions:

Emergency Medicine Physicians

Emergency and Critical Care Nurses

Anesthesiologists and Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists 

Surgeons

There will also be one final member-checking focus group that will have representation from each of the professions of interest. The dates/times of the focus groups will be confirmed after participants have been identified, but tentative windows are as follows:

Round 1 (EM & Nurse groups): April 19 – May 2, 2025; June 7 – July 11 2025 

Round 2 (Surgeon & Anesthesia groups): August 16 – September 29, 2025 

Round 3 (Make-up dates as needed): December 13 – December 22, 2025

Round 4 (Member-checking group): January 5 – February 13, 2026 

Benefits of Participation:

1. Contribute to valuable research: Your insights will help improve the effectiveness of cross-discipline training for military surgical teams, potentially enhancing the care provided to wounded service members.

2. Share your expertise: This is an opportunity to share your knowledge and experience with other healthcare professionals.

Confidentiality:

All information collected during the interviews will be kept strictly confidential. Your participation will remain anonymous in all research publications and presentations.

If you are interested in participating in this research study, please contact bryan.sundstrom@usuhs.edu.

Very Respectfully, 

BRYAN P. SUNDSTROM, 2d Lt, USAF, MSC

Air Force Medical Student, Class of 2027

Uniformed Services University

Bethesda, MD

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