For the past 40 years, Regional Health Command Europe has hosted the Spring Surgical Continuing Medical Education conference. This year the event took place at the Edelweiss Lodge and Resort in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.
This year the conference took place May 22-25 and provided an opportunity for U.S. doctors and providers to earn 18-24 hours of CME credits in tracks specific to operations, medicine, nursing, obstetrics and gynecology, surgery, pediatrics, orthopedics, radiology, anesthesiology and behavioral health.
Courses offered throughout the week included a Tactical Combat Casualty Care overview; a joint injection workshop; a dermatology biopsy workshop; and a battlefield acupuncture workshop. There were also a number of briefings on topics such as continuous process improvement; burn resuscitation; transgender care; neonatal chest imaging; and more.
In addition to the breakout sessions, each day of the conference began with plenary sessions which all participants attended. These sessions included briefings from Brig. Gen. Dennis LeMaster, RHCE commanding general; and international guests from Poland, Hungary, Ukraine and Germany on topics such as stability operations; and aero-medical casualty care.
International participation played a large role in this year's conference. More than 300 people attended the three and a half day event, and that included participants from 20 European and African nations.
Health care representatives from the Ukraine, Botswana, Greece, Ghana, Poland, Germany, Denmark and more, participated in the conference to learn, collaborate and network with their peers.
Col. Edward Michaud, RHCE Clinical Operations chief said, "we appreciate all of the people who came from across the world to help put this conference on. The conference provided an opportunity to build on interoperability and for the different countries to learn from each other."
LeMaster told the group that "we will never fight alone again. Interoperability is key; and that especially applies to the medical force in that we will rely on host nation and allies' medical forces if we were to have a conflict in Eastern Europe."
Dr. Oleksandr Linchevskyy, Deputy Minister of Health for Ukraine, agrees that working together and learning from each other is crucial.
"From the beginning of our conflict we have had a very positive relationship with the U.S. Army and they have been most helpful in terms of education," Linchevskyy said.
Air Force Maj. Melissa Penn, lead Air Force conference planner for the Nursing Military Exchange, said that it is nice to be able to actually see who our partners are and learn how they do business.
"Often times in deployment we may see these other countries or we may be deployed to their country, and so whether we are working side by side with them or helping to take care of their patients, it's interesting to understand how their military is made up," Penn said.
Many of the international guests attending the conference were also invited to present on a variety of topics. Greece presented on the refugee crisis in their county; Liberia presented on the armed forces role in the Ebola outbreak; and Kenya presented on asymmetrical warfare.
Maj. Lefoko Bojosi, a nurse in the Botswana Defense Force said his country was invited to participate in the conference and provided a presentation on "Adapting strategic HIV/AIDs tactics through Innovative Nursing Care."
"It was important for us to participate because we are learning from the other countries that are here," Bojosi said. "I do not work with the [United States] on a daily basis, so this is very beneficial to me."
Linchevskyy also said that sharing this information is important.
"I learn something every time and it is helpful to share information," Linchevskyy said. "When U.S. colleagues share information with me, it saves a lot of Ukrainian lives. I understand how knowledge saves lives. I've seen it. We must work together; education changes everything."
Tactical Combat Casualty Care Course
New to the conference this year was the offering of a Tactical Combat Casualty Care Course, or TC3. TC3 is the care provided to a casualty in a tactical combat situation.
According to Maj. Daniel Weinstein, Regimental surgeon for the 2nd Calvary Regiment in Vilkseck and the Operations Track lead for the conference, TC3 was offered this year as a way to allow the doctors and providers to experience "what we are encouraging to be the standard of care for the medics."
He went on to say that "if we want the medics to do this, then we should understand it."
Participants this week were provided an overview of TC3 guidelines -- learning what should be treated on the battlefield; what is appropriate care to provide when under fire; and getting patients ready for transport. They also discussed proper procedures for training medics.
The group also had an opportunity to run through scenarios with life-like mannequins. The mannequins, which could be controlled from a hand-held device, could simulate difficulty breathing, loss of blood, and other ailments which medics could encounter on the battlefield.
Lt. Col. Dawn Seeley, Landstuhl Regional Medical Center Education Department chief, said she wanted to participate because TC3 is pertinent to her current position.
"I think some of the tools and resources they shared with us today I can take back to the people actually doing our trainings and have it incorporated in our courses," she said. "It is important for me to know the resources that are out there to train our people."
Seeley said that as a nurse, this training isn't something she has been exposed to before, and the conference brought the training to her.
"I think this is just a really great opportunity to see the tools available, to understand the curriculum and the impact these courses can have on your medics and that impacts the care of our Soldiers."
In the future, Weinstein hopes to expand this training.
"I hope to incorporate not just what we are seeing on the battlefield, but to take this to the next level for provider-care management in the role I, role II level for prolonged field care," he said. "So essentially taking the knowledge that we have from our clinical care doctors, the orthopedic surgeons, and taking those skills and teaching them to our primary care physicians and our medics so they can go ahead and utilize those skills when we aren't able to [medically evacuate] people out."
For more information, visit the RHCE Facebook page at www.facebook.com/RHCEurope.
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