AJChenMPH
Forum Health Inspector
Mods: feel free to move to a more appropriate forum...
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I got the chance last week (16-20Apr2007) to spend some time with a bunch of US Army Medical Service Corps (MSC) officers, I had been selected to represent the US Public Health Service at their Junior Officer Week (which is their Company Grade Leadership Development Course). Really neat bunch of folks, and I suspect that I'll be keeping in touch with a number of them. There were about 20 Army officers (in addition to me, there were representatives from the US Navy and US Air Force) selected to participate, and about 90% of them have served combat tours in Afghanistan or Iraq (in fact, two officers flew in from Iraq to participate).
We did some pretty neat things, which can basically be broken into two categories: either we were "king for the day" where we tried to solve some of the MSC's operational problems, or we did some sightseeing of Washington, DC. Off to the photos we go...
Here's the group shot -- we were sightseeing and stopped by the World War II Memorial (I'm on the far left):
Here's one of us working (I'm not in the shot, but that's my travel mug in the foreground). We basically were tasked with answering three questions: (1) How would we force re-structure the MSC? (2) How do we leadership develop MSC officers? And (3) how do we improve recruitment and retention? We tried to answer these questions in the context of the Army possibly extending combat tours overseas, as well as in light of the direction to develop "pentathelete" soldiers (an initiative of GEN Schoomaker prior to his retirement as Army Chief of Staff):
Also on our tours as we did some sightseeing were the Pentagon and Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Yep, we visited the amputee clinic and talked to several of the soldiers there -- didn't take any pictures there, I didn't think that'd be kosher. Those of you with eagle eyes will notice the yellow PHS flag in Walter Reed's lobby. ;-)
Finally, here's a picture from Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. One of the things they're working on is a high-tech litter that contains all of the traditional ICU equipment in one unit. I had originally seen one of these when I trained with an Air National Guard medical unit back in June 2004, but they're continuing to develop these cots to be lighter.
All in all, a good week. A lot of us thought it was going to be an easy week, but no -- we wound up briefing the Chief of the MSC (a one-star general) on the last day! Here's a pic of me getting my certificate from her, as well as her coin:
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I got the chance last week (16-20Apr2007) to spend some time with a bunch of US Army Medical Service Corps (MSC) officers, I had been selected to represent the US Public Health Service at their Junior Officer Week (which is their Company Grade Leadership Development Course). Really neat bunch of folks, and I suspect that I'll be keeping in touch with a number of them. There were about 20 Army officers (in addition to me, there were representatives from the US Navy and US Air Force) selected to participate, and about 90% of them have served combat tours in Afghanistan or Iraq (in fact, two officers flew in from Iraq to participate).
We did some pretty neat things, which can basically be broken into two categories: either we were "king for the day" where we tried to solve some of the MSC's operational problems, or we did some sightseeing of Washington, DC. Off to the photos we go...
Here's the group shot -- we were sightseeing and stopped by the World War II Memorial (I'm on the far left):
Here's one of us working (I'm not in the shot, but that's my travel mug in the foreground). We basically were tasked with answering three questions: (1) How would we force re-structure the MSC? (2) How do we leadership develop MSC officers? And (3) how do we improve recruitment and retention? We tried to answer these questions in the context of the Army possibly extending combat tours overseas, as well as in light of the direction to develop "pentathelete" soldiers (an initiative of GEN Schoomaker prior to his retirement as Army Chief of Staff):
Also on our tours as we did some sightseeing were the Pentagon and Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Yep, we visited the amputee clinic and talked to several of the soldiers there -- didn't take any pictures there, I didn't think that'd be kosher. Those of you with eagle eyes will notice the yellow PHS flag in Walter Reed's lobby. ;-)
Finally, here's a picture from Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. One of the things they're working on is a high-tech litter that contains all of the traditional ICU equipment in one unit. I had originally seen one of these when I trained with an Air National Guard medical unit back in June 2004, but they're continuing to develop these cots to be lighter.
All in all, a good week. A lot of us thought it was going to be an easy week, but no -- we wound up briefing the Chief of the MSC (a one-star general) on the last day! Here's a pic of me getting my certificate from her, as well as her coin:
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