USUHS
Opportunity to Contribute to USU Research Project
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
Announcing the USU Packard Lecture for 2025
Greetings.
We are thrilled to be welcoming Mr. Larry Ellison to the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences for the annual Packard Lecture on Wednesday April 23, 2025 at 2PM Eastern time.
Larry Ellison is chairman of Oracle Corporation and chief technology officer. He founded Oracle in 1977.
Please see the official flyer (attached). For those wanting to attend this event in person, advanced registration is required, as seating will be limited compared to what we anticipate will be great interest amongst people both within USU and other agencies and partners.
There will be a virtual option but we will send that link/info as we get closer to the event.
To register for in-person attendance, please use the QR code on the attached flyer.
Most sincerely,
Geeta Upadhyay PhD and Craig Shriver, MD
USU School of Medicine Associate Dean for Regional Education – Naval Medical Center Portsmouth
This position will open in the summer of 2025 to Medical Corps Officers from any specialty or service assigned or eligible for assignment to Naval Medical Center Portsmouth (NMCP). The selectee will be required to devote 0.5 full-time equivalents to the administrative needs of the position and 0.5 full-time equivalents to clinical practice at NMCP.
The ideal candidate will have the following attributes:
1. Has an M.D or D.O. degree, current medical licensure, appropriate staff appointment and board certification in their specialty.
2. Holds a USU faculty appointment of Associate Professor or higher and participates in faculty activities such as teaching, research and patient care.
3. Has formal training or experience in faculty development or health professions education.
4. Has ten years of experience, or in-depth knowledge of the Military Health System to include familiarity with the Joint Service Graduate Medical Education system and new and emerging military unique educational requirements.
5. Knows the assessment requirements for each core medical student clerkship at NMCP
6. Knows state-of-the-art faculty development programs that are required to fulfill LCME and ACGME accreditation standards.
7. Able to facilitate inter-departmental and inter-professional collaboration.
8. Demonstrates exceptionally strong professional written and oral communication skills, coupled with the ability to negotiate complex conflict laden situations and to develop consensus-based solutions.
9. Can commit to a minimum of three years in the position.
Interested candidates should notify CAPT Mark Tschanz of their intent to apply. Navy applicants must submit a complete application package include CV, Letter of Intent and the last three performance evaluations via a single combined pdf over e-mail to CAPT Shauna O’Sullivan no later than 14 FEB 2025. Questions can be directed to the incumbent, Lt Col Andrew Thagard.
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