Photo By Petty Officer 3rd Class Deven Fernandez | Sailors carry a patient down to casualty receiving as part of a mass casualty drill...... read more read more
Military Sealift Command (MSC) conducted its first Operational Readiness Assessment (ORA) for Navy hospital ships during a Comfort Exercise (COMFEX) aboard USNS Comfort (T-AH 20) at Naval Station Norfolk, May 1-5.
While COMFEX is a routine training exercise conducted aboard the ship, incorporating the ORA allows MSC, as Type Commander for the Navy hospital ships, to evaluate policies and requirements that are needed to ensure crewmembers and staff are able to accomplish their mission when they deploy.
“We are looking to evaluate and assess the Comfort’s crew on how they work as a team on process development, basic requirements, and also how they work with the Civil Service Mariners to carry out their mission,” said Lt. Cmdr. Sasha Smith, MSC Action Officer.
During COMFEX, the hospital ship is fully staffed and operational to include members from Navy Medicine Readiness and Training Command Portsmouth. The exercise challenges the crew in a holistic mission-based environment that incorporates real world scenarios such as earthquakes, civil unrests and active-duty casualties to personnel aboard the ship.
“We’re doing mass casualty drills, shipboard fire drills, man overboard drills and abandon ship drills,” said Comfort Command Master Chief (CMDCM) Tito Santa Cruz. “Then each individual directorate will have their own training scenario that’s specific to their specialty of care. Even support services have their own specific elements. You don’t often think about how important it is to feed a large crew, but we have activated the galley and they are training to accommodate a large crew as if we’re on a mission.”
“We’re taught in the Crash and Salvage crew proficiency is most paramount,” added Aviation Boatswain’s Mate (Handler) 2nd Class Herchiel Jones. “When a breakdown happens, you don’t have time think about it. Life doesn’t always present perfect scenarios, so we have to prepare for what we can’t prepare for.”
In addition to MSC Medical Force and various other MSC offices, other units involved in the assessment included, Afloat Training Group Norfolk, the Fleet Surgical Teams 2, Fleet Surgical Team 4 and the Naval Warfare Development Center. The assessment is not a graded event, but the primary focus is still about operational readiness.
“We’re getting the crew to their top level of readiness. It’s important that we are able to get underway, do our jobs and do what the nation needs us to do,” added MSC Force Medical Master Chief Hospital Corpsman Master Chief Nathan Marsh.
Smith said after the assessment, MSC will develop an after-action report identifying areas where the crew performed well and areas that need improvement. The report will be used to create policy driven by requirements necessary to allow the crew to perform successfully.
“The end state goal is to be able to conduct this type of assessment on the T-AH platform yearly and eventually to become a certified event. The next step is planning to conduct an Operational Readiness Assessment aboard USNS Mercy (T-AH 19),” she said.
| Date Taken: | 05.04.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 05.08.2023 12:39 |
| Story ID: | 444268 |
| Location: | NORFOLK, VIRGINIA, US |
| Web Views: | 332 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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