Photo By Marcy Sanchez | Landstuhl Regional Medical Center staff participate in the Advanced Surgical Skills...... read more read more
A first-of-its-kind training at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center occurred as staff participated in the Advanced Surgical Skills for Exposure in Trauma (ASSET+) course, the first iteration of the course ever hosted at LRMC, Feb. 23-24.
The course establishes combat training competencies and coordinates training to develop and sustain Department of Defense trauma surgeons located in operational environments, military treatment facilities, or at Level I trauma treatment facilities. With a focus trauma response, U.S. Army, Air Force, and civilian surgeons from LRMC trained alongside international surgical staff from Germany and Hungary.
“It is a course developed by the American College of Surgeons that focuses on advanced surgical exposure in trauma,” explained U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Mary Stuever, a general surgeon and trauma medical director at LRMC. “The goal of the course is to have surgeons focus on vascular exposure to control hemorrhage and traumatic injury.”
According to the American College of Surgeons, the organization responsible for verifying trauma center capabilities in the U.S., the course has three learning objectives for surgeons: Demonstrate key anatomical exposures for the care of injured and acutely ill surgical patients; Show the technical ability to expose important structures that may require acute surgical intervention to save life or limb; and Gain confidence in performing anatomic exposures independently.
The unique iteration of the course at LRMC is not only distinct due to international participants in the course but also being the first time LRMC staff have affiliated medical education use of non-U.S. Citizen cadavers with host nation partners. Additionally, the diverse expertise of international course advisors helped expand training objectives and approaches to medical assessments.
“You've got experienced instructors who've done a lot of trauma care, whether it was during wartime through conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan or whether they were at civilian institutions with a high volume of traumatic injuries,” explains Stuever. “The course offers faculty from all over the world, we have a faculty member from the Netherlands, the faculty member from Estonia, as well as faculty member from Germany who did most of his trauma training in South Africa. Trauma care throughout the world is becoming increasingly interoperable, I think the United States has really led the way in trauma care and developing a certain (medical) language so that when you work with other surgeons, you're speaking the same language.”
“We’re sharing our experiences from military deployments as well as from abroad. The German military has a training program in Johannesburg, South Africa. We send military surgeons to get exposure to penetrating injury, which rarely happens in Central Europe,” said German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) Lt. Col. Thorsten Hauer, a general surgeon at the Bundeswehr Hospital, Berlin, and medical advisor at the course. “In combat zones (surgeons treat) a lot of penetrating injuries such as gunshot wounds and blast injuries. We have little exposure to this, which is why we need to share our experiences to have a common understanding how to surgically treat injuries.”
Although a U.S.-led effort, the training also invited foreign surgical staff to diversify experiences not only from advisors, but within surgical teams themselves.
“This is a very intense kind of training method because (students) have a very experienced trauma surgeon on one and one training situation, (students) get a specific task beforehand, you get it explained a little, get some information and then jump into it,” said Bundeswehr Lt. Col. Jan Frech, a general surgeon at the Bundeswehr Central Hospital, Koblenz, and participant in the ASSET + course. “I've been on mission with American Soldiers, with Dutch soldiers, and NATO soldiers all over. We all speak the same (foreign) language in our basic training, every surgeon, every medical (personnel) will speak the same language concerning basic treatments but here, the course is in English. The medical (procedures) are challenging but doing it in a different language is a very important (capability) because if (surgeons) are working in a multinational environment and (surgeons) are not perfect in the language you'll get problems.”
“(The training) is critical to maintain (surgical) ability to operate on traumatic patients because overnight this hospital could transform back to a level 1 trauma center upon any kind of event that would happen throughout this side of the world, whether it be a natural disaster or wartime conflict,” said Stuever. “Not only does the training help with technique and (identifying ailments) but readiness.”
| Date Taken: | 03.15.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 03.15.2023 04:30 |
| Story ID: | 440420 |
| Location: | LANDSTUHL, RHEINLAND-PFALZ, DE |
| Web Views: | 123 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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