After working hard during my first year of medical school, I was ready for a break. Unlike all of the other medical schools around the nation however, USUHS graciously gave us two weeks off as a summer break and filled the rest of our lives with Army training. As military physicians we are supposed to be ready to provide great medicine in bad places...so I guess that means that we need some additional training. 700 additional class hours to be exact. Most of those are seen during the first and second years with additional classes that many other schools don't have. But some are just good old fashion Army fun.
Take for example this highly important skill - learning to tie our own harnesses out of rope and repelling off of a fifty foot wall. It doesn't seem that high until you get up there and start leaning back. Luckily the jump master was up top coaching us through the exercise. I've repelled before so it was not that bad for me, but there were a few "tough Army guys" that barely made it over the edge. Funny how even the mean guys get scared some times.
Here is a view from the top. This is Edward Reese. He is a friend from school who is also a member of the Church. He didn't have much trouble getting off the building.
Now that we were proficient in jumping off walls to rescue those in need... it was time to learn to read maps and use a compass. Being a Boy Scout myself and having been lost in the desert with my father, Asa Nielson, the Archaeologist, this was no new task for me. In fact, I ended up helping those who had never before seen a topographic map. It was fun and all but didn't really help us for the week at Kerkesner.
This is me with Drew Kaffer and Christopher Ochieng during lunch. We actually had already spent the morning wandering through the forest around the school (yes there are still trees in Washington DC) looking for various markers, but our platoon leader felt that we had much to learn about being soldiers. I'm afraid that his previous life in the infantry would make it so that he would never be satisfied with the new Medical-Rifle Platoon.
Now, this is a skill that my civilian counterparts are not learning at their school - how to kick down doors and clear rooms with the marines - not that any of us would dare do such a thing. The marines who boldly and selflessly serve our nation deserve all the respect in the world for what they do. This was simply a small moment we had to learn from a few of them about how they do such a thing. In this picture Corporal Espinosa leads the stack outside the lining of what symbolizes a room they are about to enter and clear.
And yes - we then got to put this training into practice a short moment later. Pictured here from left to right are Jesse, Theo, Chris, and Dan preparing to enter a room. Maybe Theo's facial expression sums up the day's events and what it feels like to prepare to enter a room where you don't know what is waiting for you. Why were we learning this as medical students? We will never carry out these functions, but knowing how our marines are working helps us better know what injuries to expect as their doctors. It also helps us to become better prepared to offer life saving service to those in a live combat zone. Not pictured here is a member of our platoon acting as the medic. While we spent the whole week learning to do many things that our marines, sailors, soldiers, and airmen are doing, the focus was on learning how to provide life saving care in a live combat zone. It wore us out and even seemed silly at times, but in the end was a great experience. Who needs summer break?
Thursday was a day in which we put the whole week together in a long training exercise. Because of the high tempo of the day, I did not take too many good pictures, but here is one final bit of training we got - learning to call a 9 line. A 9 line is the standard call for a MEDEVAC - Medical Evacuation via some air vehicle. I am not the most skilled at this, so I stumbled a lot and my classmates were patient in helping me get through it.
We spent Friday going over preventative medicine information and preparing our uniforms for the field with bug repellent... after we had spent the week crawling in the dirt and rubbing up against poison ivy. A little backward but we were all OK in the end. I never got Lyme Disease so I think we did alright.
Thursday was a day in which we put the whole week together in a long training exercise. Because of the high tempo of the day, I did not take too many good pictures, but here is one final bit of training we got - learning to call a 9 line. A 9 line is the standard call for a MEDEVAC - Medical Evacuation via some air vehicle. I am not the most skilled at this, so I stumbled a lot and my classmates were patient in helping me get through it.
We spent Friday going over preventative medicine information and preparing our uniforms for the field with bug repellent... after we had spent the week crawling in the dirt and rubbing up against poison ivy. A little backward but we were all OK in the end. I never got Lyme Disease so I think we did alright.
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