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Uniformed Services University Begins Operations Bushmaster, Kerkesner

Navy NewsStand

Story Number: NNS070724-04
Release Date: 7/24/2007 12:00:00 PM

By Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class (AW) Paul DeLaughter, National Naval Medical Center Public Affairs

BETHESDA, Md. (NNS) -- The Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences began Operations Bushmaster and Kerkesner July 10-20 at Fort Indiantown Gap, Pa.

The exercises are hands-on courses designed to provide military medical students advanced training in field medical techniques while dealing with extreme “simulated” combat scenarios.

“This is the single most important thing that we do to prepare our graduates to take care of what are absolutely the most important patients that they can ever take care of,” said Air Force Col. Charles Beadling, director of the Military and Emergency Medicine Department’s Academic Division. “(The officers) are preparing to take care of the men and women who are putting their lives on the line sacrificing for (America). If we can teach the students to be better able to save the life (of a wounded service member) then it’s worth every bit of blood, sweat and tears that we can put into it.”

The Uniformed Services University is a four-year medical university for the Army, Navy, Air Force and the Public Health Service. The curriculum at the university is unique to the military and the two operations are part of that military training.

“The (courses) have been established to give future military medical officers the knowledge, skills and attitude to perform their duties in extreme situations,” Beadling said. “This will make them better leaders.”

Operation Bushmaster, the more advanced of the two courses, is a practical final exam for medical students. The course allows students to practice the skills they have learned during their first three years of combat medical care instructions.

“When I went overseas in support of Operation Desert Shield, I brought a few publications with me. With those, I also brought my text book from the university’s Military Contingency Medicine (program),” Beadling said. “I was the senior medical officer for a special operations command that was still under construction. I was required to set up and maintain several programs that had not been addressed before. (If I had not attended the course) I would not have been able to do my job as efficiently as I did."

Beadling said people who elect to attend the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences want to defend their country and be a part of an operationally relevant mission for the military branch they choose to serve.

“A graduate from the Uniformed Services University is a significantly different commodity than that from a different source,” Beadling said.

Operation Kerkesner is an exercise for first-year students that provides them a basic concept of their jobs on the front lines, said Air Force Lt. Col. Lisa Beck, director of the Military and Emergency Medicine Department’s Academic Support Division.

“These training operations are what lay the foundation for what these young officers are going to need to know as doctors in the military,” she said.

Beck said the training helps young doctors build confidence and it teaches them ways to become better leaders.