Articles
One Team: Partnerships, Joint Medical Operations and Wounded Warrior Care
United States Army, Command Surgeon, United States Army Pacific
On behalf of Lieutenant General Francis Wiercinski, Commander of the United States Army, Pacific, it is my great pleasure to welcome you all to the 21st Asia-Pacific Military Medicine Conference. Aloha. ADF Surgeon General, Major General Paul Alexander and United States Pacific Command Surgeon, Rear Admiral Michael Mittelman, thank you both for your outstanding comments. They reinforce our desire for strong partnerships and inspire us to forge solutions to the complex challenges that our sister nations face today. I particularly would like to thank the Australian Defence Force for graciously hosting APMMC XXI this year. The hospitality of Australia and Sydney has been overwhelming.
To our long-standing ally Japan, I extend my deepest sympathy for the loss of life and mass destruction that has occurred from the March 11th earthquake and tsunami. I know that the work of the Japanese Self Defense Forces has immensely helped reduce the pain and suffering of your people. I believe I can speak for our entire international delegation and echo Admiral Mittelman’s remarks when I say that you have our hopes and prayers for a speedy and full recovery.
It has been 15 years since we held this forum in Sydney and seven years since it was in Brisbane. Since then, the world has changed dramatically and many events have occurred which have brought our military brethren together more closely Asia-Pacific Military Medicine Conference than ever before. Just in the past year, we have witnessed unprecedented natural disasters that devastated communities in Queensland Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Pakistan, Haiti, Japan and the Southeast United States.
Although our countries are separated by a vast ocean, it is through humanitarian assistance and disaster relief missions that our nations and Armed Forces are often most strongly bonded. The silver lining to these tragic events are the unique opportunities afforded for developing stronger relationships by learning from each other and working together to defeat ever-growing transnational threats. As aptly noted by Lt, Col. Gerard Wood, our Kiwi plenary speaker from whom we will hear later this morning, when it comes to a crisis, “It’s always good when you know who’s on the other end of the phone.
” We have a tremendously talented team of speakers from around the world and impressive presentations and exhibits that promote cooperation in operational missions and partnerships in academia and research. As you review this week’s program, you will quickly see that the APMMC planners have brought in a dazzling array of international subject matter experts in topics such as humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, synchronized operational medicine, health service support, emerging infectious diseases, service member and family resiliency, veteran’s health and veterinary medicine.
This week, you’ll hear from several of the United States Army’s Corps chiefs as well as our most senior medic on transformation and training. Leadership in healthcare and medic development are key initiatives that translate directly into benefits to Soldiers on the battlefield. Simulation medical training centers across the Army build confidence in our medics. Joint training, as advanced by the United States’ Medical Education Training Campus (METC) and the Defense Medical Research and Training Institute (DMRTI), has paid and will continue to pay huge dividends in saving lives.
In the spirit of International Nurses’ Day we will feature sessions in our conference on advances in nursing education. Nursing internships and hands-on training at many of our fixed facilities has better prepared nurses for combat missions and contingency operations. In fact, my former aide-de-camp, Capt. Robert Parsley, is an intensive care unit nurse who is currently deployed to Afghanistan as part of a new capability embedded in our Forward Surgical Teams, namely an in-transit care nurse who is used for rotary wing evacuations to the Combat Support Hospital. It’s working to save lives.
An important takeaway from these advances is that these changes in training give gravely injured service members at least one more day to live. And one more day gives them the absolute greatest chance for survival that our nation has ever seen in the history of American combat.
This week, we will hear about how the military’s approach to warrior care has also transformed over the past four years. The emphasis on treatment, appointments, responsiveness, comprehensive transition programs, integrated disabilities systems between the Department of Defense’s Military Health System and the Veteran’s Administration, and the importance of a squad leader who is compassionate, caring and understanding of the medical conditions. We know these initiatives go a long way to improve the resiliency of our wounded service members. Military medicine brings the necessary intellect, innovation and warrior ethos that will engage the human spirit, push the envelope and facilitate the healing of our service members.
Rehabilitative research conducted throughout military medicine has been phenomenal. Knowledge of traumatic brain injury has increased in leaps and bounds. It is breathtaking to watch an above-the-elbow amputee grab something with total control and no degradation in the strength of his arm or hand and be able to feel his fingers touch the object. These advances, and others, are tributes to military medicine that will be featured this week.
Before I close, here are some questions to ponder as you mill through the thought-provoking sessions this week.
Is it possible to eradicate emerging infections, such as pandemic influenza, malaria and now resurgent polio from the planet? How can we learn from one another in adopting standardized protocols and collaborating further to reduce the pain and suffering of our people? After a disaster occurs somewhere in the world, what are the lessons learned from the challenges to planners and operators as a result of the influx of non-governmental and international organizations and services? What else can we learn about the platinum 10 minutes and the golden hour from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq and how can we apply them to the Pacific region? These and many other issues are tough challenges for our nations and Armed Forces and will be discussed in greater detail curing this week’s forum.
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