“One of the great things about some of the partnerships we have with Wright-Patt is having men and women in uniform at our facility all the time, and there’s a learning experience that happens where we have the chance to learn from them and it really improves the way we provide care here at Soin Medical Center,” said Tryon.
The partnership began when the Air Force recognized the need for increased training for critical care technicians and Kettering presented an opportunity for a relationship with Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
“It’s really been in the last 14 months that it started,” Woodard said. “As such, a blank slate has been developed at this training center over the past 14 months in association with the Kettering Health Network.”
And while it’s the newest of the six USAFSAM-run sites, it’s a very unique site, Woodard added.
“This is the first and only enlisted Critical Care Technician course we have,” Woodard said. “It’s the first, and only, training these critical care technicians for our needs throughout the Air Force and really for the DOD, that’s kind of a unique asset.”
There will be 10 classes per year with 10 technicians for a four week course, where students will receive a combination of didactics, lectures and high fidelity simulations with manikins before direct patient care.
“The [simulation laboratory] in this program allows us to train our enlisted technicians to become Critical Care Technicians, which allows us to ensure that we have the medical resources available in any emergency operation, whether in peacetime, in times of war and natural disaster,” Woodard said.
Thanks to the sim-lab, the technicians learn to react to any situation; whether it’s a humanitarian disaster, natural disaster or some other unfortunate event, technicians will be “trained and ready to respond,” Woodard said. “Through this development of the network, we are able to leverage everyone’s resources and scale up as needed to ensure that we both support the community, in which we are embedded, and that we are also able to support and provide technicians anywhere and anytime with the medical training they need to do their job.
Maj. Kyle Perry, Chief of Enlisted Critical Care Division, USAFSAM, is a critical care nurse and instructor of didactic portions of enlisted critical care training in the classroom and lab sim.
Now that the course is up and running, Perry said the goal is to keep the program going and ensure continuous improvement, as Air Force Critical Care Technicians are an integral part of the team. In the Air Force intensive care unit, the team consists of a doctor, a nurse and an intensive care technician.
“We also have other entities, but that’s kind of the core,” Perry said. “And that’s how we practice it in the United States, around the world, whether it’s peacetime [or] deployed places, this is how we practice. It is therefore imperative that we train these critical care technicians in a network capable of providing them with this clinical experience, as well as our instruction.
Kettering working hand in hand with the Air Force benefits the local community in a variety of ways.
“The very education that we work so hard to build, and then train our students, we basically inject into the community,” Perry said. “Because that’s where our training takes place, it’s in the Kettering network. People in the local community directly benefit from our training that we do for the Air Force because we do it right here in their patient care environments.
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About the AFRL
The Air Force Research Laboratory is the principal scientific research and development center of the Department of the Air Force. The AFRL plays a critical role in the discovery, development and integration of affordable combat technologies for our air, space and cyberspace force.
With a staff of over 11,500 people in nine technology areas and 40 other operations around the world, AFRL offers a diverse portfolio of science and technology ranging from basic research to advanced research and technology development. For more information, visitwww.afresearchlab.com.
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