Photo By Bernard Little | Navy Capt. Felix Drew Bigby, interim director of Walter Reed National Military Medical...... read more read more
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By Bernard S. Little
Walter Reed leadership welcomed Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) prospective students to the medical center April 21 for a briefing about “The President’s Hospital,” before taking them to various areas throughout the hospital where they may work during their graduate medical education (GME) careers.
Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (WRNMMC) and USU are located on Naval Support Activity Bethesda (NSAB), and many of the providers at WRNMMC serve on the USU faculty. Walter Reed and USU are also part of the National Capital Consortium (NCC), the sponsoring institution for all military GME in the National Capital Region and the largest sponsor of GME for the Military Health System (MHS). The NCC also includes Malcolm Grow Medical Clinic at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, and Fort Belvoir Community, Hospital at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
Walter Reed is often referred to as “The President’s Hospital” because President Franklin D. Roosevelt selected the hospital’s present site in Bethesda, Maryland and the exterior design of the original main hospital. In addition, it has served as the main medical care facility outside the White House for America's presidents.
In welcoming USU’s prospective students to “The President’s Hospital,” Navy Capt. Felix Bigby, WRNMMC’s interim director, said, “In September of 1994, Ensign [Felix] Drew Bigby reported to [WRNMMC] for hospital orientation. Twenty-nine years later, by some act of God and luck, I get to run this hospital and work with an outstanding group of providers, nurses, technicians, administrators, and others whom I could have only dreamed of ever working with,” he added.
Bigby shared that he joined the Navy at 27, “looking for life’s adventure.” He said that he told his Navy recruiter he wanted to work at “The President’s Hospital,” with little idea of where it was at the time. He added that was the beginning of a career which has taken him around the globe and led to establishing “lifelong friends because of that shared bond of doing something bigger than us. The most common fabric in that bond is ‘You’re the doc,’ responsible for saving lives.”
“Americans allow their sons and daughters to go into the military and go in harm’s way because they feel we’re going to take care of them should they be injured,” Bigby continued. “And we do. We train one-third of the physicians in the military,” and [USU] has a better than 90 percent board pass rate for first-time takers, making it one of the top GME programs in the world, he added. The national average is an 86 percent pass rate for first-time takers.
Navy Command Master Chief Trey Hauptmann, WRNMMC’s senior enlisted leader, said he’s “enjoyed every second” of his military career in emergency medicine. He shared that on his very first deployment, which was to Freetown, Sierra Leone on a humanitarian mission, he saw a woman probably in her 60s trying to hold together her tattered dress while hastily evacuating out of the dangerous region during the country’s civil war. “I had a couple of safety pins which were part of our medical gear, and I handed them to her so she could pin up her dress. I didn’t think anything of it and kept going on.
“Later, while on the ship, that woman saw me. She came running up to me and gave me a giant hug. She reached into her tote bag and pulled out those two safety pins. That meant the world to me, and that’s the reason I’m still here today,” Hauptmann said.
“It’s what you do for humanity that really matters,” he added.
Army Col. (Dr.) Maureen Petersen, GME director, emeritus at WRNMMC, said she was born at Walter Reed, and after graduating from the College of William & Mary with the help of an Army ROTC scholarship, attended USU.
She told the prospective USU students that training at the university and Walter Reed will greatly prepare them to take care of patients and become board certified. “One hundred percent of our training programs are accredited,” she added. In addition, she shared that USU and WNMMC have more trainees involved in active research protocols than any other medical centers in the Department of Defense. Also, GME at USU/WRNMMC has the most trainee research awards, and many of the programs here are unique in DOD, including the nationally renowned forensic psychiatry program, sleep medicine center of distinction, and the vascular surgery is one of the oldest in the United States.
“Be the best medical student during your rotations and it will work out for you,” Petersen said to the prospective USU students. One piece of advice she left with the prospective USU students is “that emotional intelligence is one of the keys to being a good provider.”
“The reason I say that is if you give me somebody who wants to learn but may not be the smartest person I’m working with, and the smartest person thinks he or she is a hot shot and does not want to learn, I rather take the person who is compassionate, eager to learn, ask questions and is curious.” She explained that she can teach a person the technical aspects of being a provider. However, the compassion must come from within the person.
During their visit to WRNMMC, the prospective USU students received tours of the National Intrepid Center of Excellence, Pathology Department, 3D Medical Applications Center, Intensive Care Unit, and other areas at the medical center where they may work and further their medical education.
| Date Taken: | 04.26.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 04.26.2023 15:34 |
| Story ID: | 443434 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 251 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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