Team Infidel
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Norfolk Virginian-Pilot
October 28, 2007 By Kate Wiltrout, The Virginian-Pilot
PORTSMOUTH--The Navy's new surgeon general, who made his first trip to Hampton Roads in his new role last week, faces no shortage of challenges.
Navy medical personnel are worn down by deployments to combat hospitals in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait, Vice Adm. Adam Robinson Jr. said in an interview.
The Navy hasn't met its recruitment targets for medical students since 2004, he added. And Robinson said he must convince civilian medical schools "that we are really in a long, protracted war and we need help from the American people and American medical institutions."
Stateside, the Navy is converting thousands of military medical jobs to civilian positions and changing the way it trains military doctors.
Traditionally, the Navy required its doctors to serve on a ship or at a clinic as a "general medical officer" after a one-year internship.
"It's a situation and an institution that's worked well in the past," Robinson said. "It's not going to work well now."
He noted that 34 states require more than one year of experience before licensing physicians.
So over the next five years, the Navy will switch to a system in which doctors finish both their internship and residency before serving in the fleet.
"I think it will have a positive effect for our medical school students," said Robinson, who spent seven years here in the 1990s: five as chief of general surgery at Portsmouth Naval Medical Center and two more with the Navy's Atlantic surface fleet.
After three years at the helm of the National Naval Medical Center in Maryland - better known as "Bethesda Naval" - Robinson became surgeon general in August.
At Bethesda, where the bulk of blast-induced traumatic brain injuries are handled, the Navy is preparing for a proposed merger with Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
Robinson said he has no plans to change the way the Navy treats injured troops. Bethesda and San Diego Naval Medical Center will continue taking the most critical cases: Bethesda because it specializes in blast-induced traumatic brain injuries and San Diego because it's near Camp Pendleton, a large Marine Corps base.
As the war continues and casualties mount, "Portsmouth may have to step up and take center stage in how we're delivering the care, and we may actually let other places step back," Robinson said.
Portsmouth, one of the three largest Navy medical centers, is contributing to the war effort by sending personnel to war zones and on humanitarian missions, he said.
Navy medical personnel play an increasingly prominent role in disaster relief and humanitarian efforts. Navy ships responded to the southeast Asian tsunami in 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and medical teams were sent to Pakistan after a devastating earthquake that year.
This month, the hospital ship Comfort finished a four-month mission providing basic health care to 98,000 people in 12 nations in Central and South America.
While the war especially requires anesthesiologists, critical-care nurses, trauma surgeons and mental health personnel, humanitarian missions often call for obstetrician-gynecologists, pediatricians and internal medicine specialists, Robinson said.
The Navy's conversion of 148 military physicians to civilian positions in 2005 has most affected uniformed doctors in family practice, internal medicine and pediatrics, according to a Government Accountability Office study last year.
Robinson said hiring civilian doctors makes financial sense because the Navy saves personnel and retirement costs. But if too many positions are converted, it can hobble military members' career paths. It also removes those positions from the pool of people who can be used for deployments.
"I have to make sure as I convert I don't destroy my readiness of the operational and uniformed forces," Robinson said. "That is a major issue."
October 28, 2007 By Kate Wiltrout, The Virginian-Pilot
PORTSMOUTH--The Navy's new surgeon general, who made his first trip to Hampton Roads in his new role last week, faces no shortage of challenges.
Navy medical personnel are worn down by deployments to combat hospitals in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait, Vice Adm. Adam Robinson Jr. said in an interview.
The Navy hasn't met its recruitment targets for medical students since 2004, he added. And Robinson said he must convince civilian medical schools "that we are really in a long, protracted war and we need help from the American people and American medical institutions."
Stateside, the Navy is converting thousands of military medical jobs to civilian positions and changing the way it trains military doctors.
Traditionally, the Navy required its doctors to serve on a ship or at a clinic as a "general medical officer" after a one-year internship.
"It's a situation and an institution that's worked well in the past," Robinson said. "It's not going to work well now."
He noted that 34 states require more than one year of experience before licensing physicians.
So over the next five years, the Navy will switch to a system in which doctors finish both their internship and residency before serving in the fleet.
"I think it will have a positive effect for our medical school students," said Robinson, who spent seven years here in the 1990s: five as chief of general surgery at Portsmouth Naval Medical Center and two more with the Navy's Atlantic surface fleet.
After three years at the helm of the National Naval Medical Center in Maryland - better known as "Bethesda Naval" - Robinson became surgeon general in August.
At Bethesda, where the bulk of blast-induced traumatic brain injuries are handled, the Navy is preparing for a proposed merger with Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
Robinson said he has no plans to change the way the Navy treats injured troops. Bethesda and San Diego Naval Medical Center will continue taking the most critical cases: Bethesda because it specializes in blast-induced traumatic brain injuries and San Diego because it's near Camp Pendleton, a large Marine Corps base.
As the war continues and casualties mount, "Portsmouth may have to step up and take center stage in how we're delivering the care, and we may actually let other places step back," Robinson said.
Portsmouth, one of the three largest Navy medical centers, is contributing to the war effort by sending personnel to war zones and on humanitarian missions, he said.
Navy medical personnel play an increasingly prominent role in disaster relief and humanitarian efforts. Navy ships responded to the southeast Asian tsunami in 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and medical teams were sent to Pakistan after a devastating earthquake that year.
This month, the hospital ship Comfort finished a four-month mission providing basic health care to 98,000 people in 12 nations in Central and South America.
While the war especially requires anesthesiologists, critical-care nurses, trauma surgeons and mental health personnel, humanitarian missions often call for obstetrician-gynecologists, pediatricians and internal medicine specialists, Robinson said.
The Navy's conversion of 148 military physicians to civilian positions in 2005 has most affected uniformed doctors in family practice, internal medicine and pediatrics, according to a Government Accountability Office study last year.
Robinson said hiring civilian doctors makes financial sense because the Navy saves personnel and retirement costs. But if too many positions are converted, it can hobble military members' career paths. It also removes those positions from the pool of people who can be used for deployments.
"I have to make sure as I convert I don't destroy my readiness of the operational and uniformed forces," Robinson said. "That is a major issue."