A partnership between UNC and the U.S. Army allows military medical personnel to receive trauma training at UNC Medical Center. The goal is to help military surgeons and other care providers better prepare to treat traumatic injuries, such as gunshot wounds and burns, to ultimately save lives.
The UNC Trauma Military Education Immersion Center, or MEDIC, is coming up on one year of operations. Formally established in November of 2020, the program is a military-civilian partnership at UNC Health that focuses on training army physicians, nurses and EMTs.
As a nationally recognized Level I Trauma and Burn Center, UNC Medical Center helps army personnel learn from real-world experience, with trauma surgeons and other providers helping educate them on best practices.
“This has been a huge venture,” said Dr. Daryhl Johnson, the driving force behind MEDIC and the medical director of the UNC Trauma Program. “Imagine combining two brands, you know UNC has its brand and the army has its brand, and putting two of these major entities together to commonly work towards a common goal.”
Johnson said, as military medics generally care for a young and healthy population, this partnership provides them the opportunity to maintain their trauma and critical care skills in non-war times. This is done by working side-by-side with UNC Medical Center staff as they oversee trauma patients and participating in simulation trainings.
“When we’re at war, the military medical establishment is obviously engaged, and the more you’re engaged, the better your skillsets stay sharp,” Johnson said. “When we are not at war, you don’t get to exercise those skills that much.”
As a part of MEDIC, some military physicians are embedded within the medical center, working and living full time in Chapel Hill, while others rotate in on a periodic basis – often before deployment.
“It’s that opportunity where we’re getting better at UNC, we’re training together and we get to learn things from the army,” Johnson said. “You know, in trauma care, a lot of things [have] got to start in war and on the military side, and we take that and when we incorporate that into the civilian side.”
The MEDIC program trains a multitude of military personnel from the Womack Army Medical Center in Fort Bragg as well as other medical brigades across the nation.
Outside of stimulating emergency preparedness for military personnel, Johnson said this partnership provides the opportunity to strengthen and improve both UNC’s and the army’s healthcare systems – especially during the pandemic.
“You’ve heard of how the civilian places were suffering from personnel loss, so this [military] personnel has actually been a boost to our resiliency at UNC,” Johnson said. “So, it’s a two-way road. They’re not just here to work on their skills, they’re here as UNC personnel, taking care of patients here in our area and across the state. And they’re actually helping us out by filling some of our civilian personnel gaps.”
Lead photo via UNC.
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