Photo By Sgt. Spencer Case | Maj. Robert Sarlay Jr., Air Force physician who works as a mentor for the Medical...... read more read more
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U.S. Air Force physician Maj. Robert Sarlay Jr. has become fond of a quote by T.E. Lawrence: “Better the Arab do it tolerably than you do it perfectly.”
Not that Sarlay thinks himself a modern-day Lawrence of Arabia. Ordinarily Sarlay, a Dallas native who now resides in Dayton, Ohio, is a man of less exotic tastes. When he’s not practicing emergency medicine at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Sarlay spends time with his wife Betsey and 3-year-old daughter Carina and plays catch with his dog Raven, a German shepherd that fetches logs rather than sticks, he said.
Since his arrival to Forward Operating Base Lightning in June, Sarlay has worked as a mentor for his Afghan National Army counterparts at the Paktya Regional Medical Hospital. As a member for the Medical Embedded Training Team at FOB Lightning, he describes his current job as equal parts administration and diplomacy. In a nutshell, Sarlay’s job is to help his Afghan counterparts overcome bad habits that are either culturally ingrained or have accumulated after more than 30 years of war.
Sarlay, who is used to working 16-hour days that the uninitiated would find grueling, said his current assignment is more mentally and emotionally much more taxing than any other assignment he’s ever done.
“It’s easy for me to do patient care because I’m well-trained and well-versed,” he said. “It’s much more difficult to develop processes for the ANA.”
Sarlay completed medical school through the military’s Health Profession Scholarship Program at the University of Texas at Houston. After his internship at Houston, he received his first job as a doctor with 9th Bombardment Sqdn., 7th Bomb Wing at Dyess, Air Force Base, Abilene, Texas, in 2000. After five years as a flight surgeon he was transferred to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base where he worked doing emergency care.
Sarlay’s formal duties as a mentor, such as advising Afghan mentees are only the tip of the iceberg, he said. The lion’s share of his work is done on the informal side, where he expends effort trying to gently and diplomatically coax his counterparts into adopting standards that doctors in the U.S. take for granted.
“It’s a lot of sitting and drinking chai and talking about why it’s good to have standards,” he said.
Standards include things like keeping proper records for patients. As the political situation in Afghanistan decayed, so did Afghan doctors’ record-keeping habits .
“I’ll ask them, ‘What if you go to Kabul and don’t come back, will [the other doctors in the hospital] know what was done with this treatment?’” he said. “They’ll say ‘Because we all talk together in the morning.’ And I’ll say, ‘But what if one morning you don’t?’”
In the course of his planning and administrative work, Sarlay has occasionally had the opportunity to practice hands-on medicine. For instance, a few weeks ago the hospital received an Afghan border policeman who had to be treated for blast lung injury, a bruising of the lungs caused by being in close proximity to a high-explosives detonation. With Sarlay’s help, the hospital staff learned how to manage ventilated patients.
“They’re slowly progressively improving,” Sarlay said of his Afghan counterparts. “When you’re here for six months you don’t necessarily see it, but when you talk to people who have been here two or three years ago you do.”
One person who has seen it is U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Bernard L. Vanpelt, a pharmacy mentor with the METT, who has been at FOB Lightning since March.
“We’ve seen progress with providers becoming more proactive with regard to trauma issues,” said Vanpelt, who hails from St. Louis and is stationed at Moody Air Force Base, Ga.
The addition of an Intensive Care Unit since Vanpelt’s arrival is one such improvement.
Vanpelt added that Sarlay’s efforts are helping the practitioners improve.
“By his being in that leadership room with the doctors, he’ll have an impact—indirectly mind you—on how the doctors understand and adhere to the newly established standards,” he said.
He looks forward to returning home to Dayton in about six months, where he will resume his practice of emergency medicine. He also hopes to be selected for the residency in a two to three year aerospace medicine program. The program would allow him to be board certified for evaluate the health of pilots, among other things.
“It’s unlike any other assignment I’ve ever had and probably ever will have,” Sarlay said of his current assignment.
| Date Taken: | 08.15.2010 |
| Date Posted: | 08.15.2010 19:43 |
| Story ID: | 54625 |
| Location: | AF |
| Web Views: | 105 |
| Downloads: | 11 |
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