‘Desert Medics’ first Soldiers through JAX Mayo Clinic TeamSTEPPS training facebook sharing buttontwitter sharing buttonlinkedin sharing buttonpinterest sharing buttonsharethis sharing button

Story by Sgt. 1st Class Neil W. McCabe

Army Reserve Medical Command

[JACKSONVILLE, Fla.] “Desert Medics” assigned to 3rd Medical Command (Deployment Support)’s 345th Field Hospital were the inaugural participants for the first iteration of the Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety training held June 21 through June 23.

Major Brandon Campbell, the 345th Field Hospital executive officer, who was in the mock tactical operations center for the training, said his Soldiers were thrilled with the TeamSTEPPS training.

“I think it’s very applicable training for what we do in our field hospital mission,” Campbell said.

“It gives us a unique opportunity to practice our skills, but also learn some new problem-solving mechanisms and some team-building and teamwork approaches,” said the former enlisted infantry Florida National Guardsman.

The 345th FH Soldiers lucked out to be the first military medical professionals through at the Mayo Clinic here. Most of the Soldiers were with the 345th FH, but they were joined by personnel from St. Petersburg, Florida, based 301st FH, said the major, who commissioned as a medical services officer in 2007, so he could be close to the infantry on the battlefield.

“We got offered this really interesting opportunity, so we are local here headquartered on Naval Air Station, Jacksonville,” he said.

Campbell said he would strongly recommend medical unit commanders consider bringing their Soldiers to the TeamSTEPPS provided by the MRTC observer-controller-trainers.

“The first thing I would say is, especially a unit that’s a couple years out from a Regional Medic or a Global Medic-type exercise, get signed up ASAP,” he said. “This is a critical type of training for a field hospital that’s either training up for a Combat Training Center rotation or for a deployment or mobilization.”

MRTC executes the Global Medic exercise, a theater-level training event, annually in two iterations, one at Fort Hunter Liggett, California, and one at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin.

Another reason unit commanders bring personnel to the TeamSTEPPS program is to prepare them for the Army’s posture transformation from two decades of counterinsurgency to large-scale combat operations, Campbell said.

“With LSCO, you need a tactical understanding of the field hospitals, technical operations and how it applies to larger strategy and doctrine is critical in the current landscape that we’re in,” he said.

“Field hospitals and hospital centers are fairly new concepts,” he said. “They haven’t really been tested in battle.”

TeamSTEPPS is crucial to LSCO readiness, he said.

“We haven’t deployed a full hospital center set in a theater of war as far as I understand, so just having more opportunities to do things as a full field hospital, like here at TeamSTEPPS, or at Global Medic or some of the other exercises is definitely critical for mission readiness for all field hospitals in the US Army Reserve,” he said.

Sergeant Maj. Folarin L. Durosawo, the operations sergeant major for the Nashville-based 332nd Medical Brigade, 3rd Medical Command, said he was impressed by how his Soldiers responded to the TeamSTEPPS training.

“This is my first time seeing this, so it brings back memories for me,” the sergeant major said. “I’ve spent time in the CSH, spent time in a lot medical units, so it brings back memories for me.” CSH, pronounced like cash, is shorthand for combat support hospital.

Durosawo said there are two main training events for military medical professionals. One set focuses on skill sustainment. “It gives those that maybe don’t work in the civilian sector, in the medical field, the opportunity to be able to come and be able to actually work on live patients and also to be able to serve their community almost like the IRT innovative readiness training.”

The second set is when the Soldiers go through training, like TeamSTEPPS training, where the personnel and the facilities are all set up, he said. “It really helps to just get at it right away, be able to walk through those processes—that communication between your section and other sections—update your SOPs so that as a unit, you’re able to be cohesive and work together.”

One of the Soldiers in the training scenarios, Capt. Patrick Ramsey, a clinical nurse anesthetist, or 66 Foxtrot, with the 481st Detachment (Surgical), based here, who said he had also participated in the TeamSTEPPS training at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

Ramsey said seeing familiar faces from the Rochester campus put him in his comfort zone.

“I would say that Rochester was a lot colder, but I think that Rochester had been through Team Steps many times before and was a well-oiled machine. I can tell that the folks from Rochester have primed the Jacksonville folks here very well because it’s looking very much like it did in Rochester here,” he said.

The Jacksonville native said that, just like in Rochester, he found himself falling into the same scenarios and playing his role.

“The process of going back and forth with the observer controller trainers and the interaction between them, because sometimes it’s hard to decide how to pretend what’s notional and what’s real,” said the clinical nurse anesthetist, who first joined the Army in 1991, motivated by the call to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi aggression.

Ramsey, who had an 18-year break in service, rejoined the Army after graduating from nursing school, said he had been through the TeamSTEPPS training at Mayo’s Rochester campus, and he was impressed at how the MRTC personnel and Mayo staff replicated that culture to Jacksonville.

In the middle of one of the scenarios, an MRTC OC/T pulled Spc. Leslie Cruz-Torres, assigned to the 481st Surgical Detachment here, from her role as the noncommissioned officer in-charge of the operating room and had her sit in the observation booth. There, she watched behind the double mirror to see if or when her colleagues noticed she was gone.

Cruz-Torres, an operating room specialist, or 68 Delta, said that before she was pulled, she assisted the surgeons and facilitated the personnel as they performed their tasks.

“I was assisting make sure the flow of the OR was going, that we were good on supplies, on staff, going over SOPs, making sure that the OR is withholding patients and staffing as well,” she said.

Then, someone tapped her on the shoulder, she said. “I disappeared to see if my peers would notice that I was gone.”

For a while, no one seemed to notice the specialist was gone, she said.
“It’s been about 20 to 25 minutes, and they have not noticed that I’m gone,” Cruz-Torres said. They mentioned it once: ‘Ooh, where’s Cruz?’ but nobody bothered looking for me.”

Major Antisia Thompson, one of the MRTC OC/Ts, is returning to work with the 7303rd Military Training Battalion for this training, even though she is now with 3rd MEDCOM’s 311th Medical Detachment (Surgical). She said part of TeamSTEPPS is teaching the Soldiers to look out for each other, so her pulling Cruz-Torres in the middle of her team role-playing surgery was a critical lesson.

“I wait to see if they notice and see if they do their accountability, which is what they should first do, and then if they can’t account for her, like send somebody to the bathroom to see if she’s there or if she went to her room,” the major said.

If a Soldier is missing, the situation must be reported to the tactical operations center, said the Army nurse who joined the service in 2004, so she could take care of Soldiers.

“I watch to see what they should do next, which is notify their TOC that they have a Soldier missing so that they can do accountability, so the TOC call out to find out maybe the MPs need to go look for her,” she said.

One of the OC/T’s, Spc. Jeanette Rosado Quintero, a patient administration specialist, or 68 Golf, assigned to the Miami-based 7217th Medical Support Unit, said this was her fourth TeamSTEPPS rotation with the Mayo Clinic.

“I feel like Mayo Clinic, this rotation really helps develop the skills of the Soldiers, especially us that are in the Army Reserve,” the specialist said. “We don’t get to do this very often.”

Quintero said she enjoys watching military medical professionals coming in Friday night for their first debrief–not sure what is coming.

After the morning and afternoon sessions Saturday, they get how to use the TeamSTEPPS language and process to improve patient care and communicate with each other and with other departments, she said. “This is where they get to have a taste of what’s actually going on, what’s going to happen, what they have to improve on, what equipment they’re missing.”

The Puerto Rico native said it is rewarding to see the Solider leave after the Sunday morning session in command of procedures.

“When they leave on Sunday, they work together more cohesively,” she said.

“They’re more of a unit instead of individuals. They learn how to work together, and most of the time, they’re from different units, and this is a really good opportunity for them to learn their own ways.”