Trial by (Simulated) Fire

Video

Medical Students Train for Battle

Students from Bethesda's Uniform Services University of the Health Sciences spend two weeks in a simulated war zone learning how to treat wounded soldiers on the battlefield. Note: contains some graphic images.

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Moulage artist Shyla Glynn said her favorite creation is an open wound fracture. To create the faux broken bone, Glynn broke off a piece of a plastic laboratory skeleton and secured it to a student's arm with wax, cotton balls and stage blood.

"It is like Halloween, actually," she said. "You can make it gruesome. You can make it as dirty as you want. Some like extra blood and like to be really messy and others whine about it."

Lt. Eric Bishop, 30, a first-year student and Army veteran, said the realism makes the exercise exciting.

"I've been in the Army 10 years and this is by far the most realistic moulage I've ever seen," said Bishop, of Gainesville, Fla. "They're making it so a doctor for the first time sees the open chest wound and amputations and can get over that fear to do the job."

The university's professors and the military's medical officers from bases around the world converge on Fort Indiantown Gap, where they devise and implement scenarios based on actual war events.

"These are all real problems that we've extracted here," said retired Navy Capt. Eric McDonald, who was a combat surgeon in Anbar Province, Iraq, and now works as an emergency physician at Naval Medical Center San Diego.

The students are evaluated on their medical aptitude and leadership skills. To graduate, each student must pass Operation Bushmaster, and the standards are high.

"It's not just taking a test and circling the right answer, but it's doing the right thing when you're tired, you're hurt and it's dark," said Army Lt. Col. Cliff Lutz, who helped develop the program.

In Bethesda, the medical students undergo the same rigorous curriculum as their peers at standard U.S. medical schools, but they have an additional 700 hours of instruction on military leadership, war trauma and field exercises.

Some of the university's students are combat veterans, but others are fresh out of college with no military experience. About 10 percent of the military's doctors have attended the university, as many graduates of traditional medical schools serve stints in the armed services, Navy Capt. Trueman Sharp said. But most of those who serve long careers as military doctors are Bethesda campus alumni.

"You can't just put a uniform on a doctor and say, 'Now practice in the military,' " said Sharp, who chairs the military and emergency medicine department. "It clearly does not work in the operational environment. We are supposed to be creating the Colonel Potters, like from 'M*A*S*H,' the career docs."

At Fort Indiantown Gap, the mass casualty came as a surprise to the fourth-year students. They rushed to the scene of the van explosion. It was pitch dark and smoke filled the air, with the thick forest illuminated only by little lights on the students' helmets and glow sticks in their hands. They raced through the trees, dodging rocks on the uneven ground, to find the 30 to 35 wounded soldiers.