Military medicine
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Individual critical task lists (ICTLs) are skills identified by the U.S. Army for the maintenance of combat readiness in each military occupational specialty, including physicians. These lists vary by medical and surgical specialties and are being utilized by leaders to determine individual deployment capability. The lists for urologists include broader tasks that are not routinely performed in a urology practice. Our goal was to create a simulation curriculum to train urologists and to perform validation testing. ⋯ The novel urology ICTL curriculum using simulation is a feasible and well-received way to keep competency on these tasks and maintain readiness. Face and content validity was established for the urology ICTL simulation curriculum, and the curriculum is exportable to equip urologists at other facilities for the urology ICTLs and for deployments, where life-saving interventions may be necessary from urologists that may be outside their ordinary scope of practice.
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Anorectal diseases, among the most common surgical conditions, are underrepresented in medical training. The Fundamentals of Anorectal Technical Skills course was developed to provide cost-effective formal training in diagnosis of common anorectal conditions and in commonly performed anorectal procedures using the theories of deliberative practice and perceptual and adaptive learning. ⋯ This course provides a cost-effective training that significantly boosts learners' confidence in diagnosis of common anorectal procedures and confidence in performance of common anorectal procedures, in addition to improving objectively measured anorectal clinical knowledge.
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This brief report describes the number and nature of cases of musculoskeletal pain and injury among sailors and marines presenting to the ship's physical therapist during recent, respective deployments of two U.S. Navy aircraft carriers. ⋯ Care should be used interpreting the results since participants were volunteers and a small proportion of eligible subjects chose not to participate in the study. Nevertheless, our data are generally consistent with other studies of musculoskeletal injury on board U.S. Navy ships and are useful for health care planning purposes and for planning for future studies that may take place on board U.S. Navy vessels. The novel and important finding of this study suggests that sports and exercise activity on board ship may warrant a new area of attention for safety.
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Case Reports
Arthropod Assault: A Case Report of Brown Recluse Envenomation in a Training Environment.
Spider bites are a common emergency department complaint, accounting for ~21% of noncanine bites, injuries, and stings. Military service members, more so than most civilian personnel, are exposed to conditions that place them at increased risk for envenomation, stings, and bites. We present the case of an active duty service member working in a relatively austere environment who presented to a level 1 trauma center with a lesion consistent with a bite from a brown recluse spider, or Loxosceles reclusa.