Military medicine
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Diabetes is a growing epidemic worldwide and among our active duty population, posing a significant threat to maintaining military health and operational readiness. Latent autoimmune diabetes in adults (LADA) is a growing clinical phenotype of diabetes, with overlap between traditional type 1 diabetes mellitus and type 2 diabetes mellitus. In this case, a 27-year-old active duty male presented with polydipsia, polyuria, polyphagia, and recent weight loss. ⋯ He remains on active duty, serving on a medically limited platform with a single medication (a glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist) and high compliance with a gluten-free, low-carbohydrate diet and regular exercise. One should consider the diagnosis of LADA and its unique management, especially in the younger active duty population. Not only is making the correct diagnosis regarding the type of diabetes critical in regard to prognosis and optimal medical management, but it can affect the ability of military members to remain on active duty.
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The Military Health System (MHS) is implementing a new electronic health record (EHR) which will impact 9.5 million Department of Defense (DoD) beneficiaries and over 205,000 MHS employees globally. The scale and scope of this EHR rollout is unprecedented; however, lessons learned from previous rollouts across smaller contexts in tandem with Kurt Lewin's Change Theory provide insights into critical success factors (CSFs) and critical barriers to implementation (CBIs) in which leadership may leverage to streamline future go-live efforts. ⋯ By operationalizing pre-identified CSFs and CBIs, leaders of the MHS are able to streamline future waves of MHS Genesis rollouts utilizing Kurt Lewin's Change Theory and the newly crafted Conceptual Framework of MHS Genesis Implementation presented in Figure 1. Through full acceptance and use of CSFs, adapting to feedback and barriers, and dynamically adjusting strategies, the challenges associated with a large-scale phased EHR implementation can be minimized. The results and implications of this literature review are significant as the MHS Genesis rollout is still in its infancy and evidence-based best practices can still be executed. MHS Genesis continues to be phase implemented and currently only the Pacific Northwest and parts of California have gone operational. Increasing efficiency in this process provides a benefit to stakeholders at all levels: health care providers, patients, leadership, and taxpayers.
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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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This article describes four tiers for knowledge required by U. S. military personnel to effectively execute global health activities. Department of Defense policy does not identify a formal global health education path for personnel responsible for global health activities. Department of Defense must implement formal education programs to improve mission success and favorable health outcomes.
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Measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) and varicella (VAR) vaccines are the two vaccines administered in large recruit training sites (RTS) that require a single-use syringe to be prefilled with the diluent (ie water) before vaccine reconstitution. Since there are no preservatives in either MMR or VAR vaccines, it is critical to maintain the diluent sterile to ensure the sterility of the reconstituted vaccine. The Department of Defense/Defense Health Agency has instructions on reconstitution of lyophilized vaccines and guidelines for their storage. Vaccine manufacturers provide instructions on how to properly store the diluent. However, there is no clear guidance or standard operating procedures regarding the best practice for preparation and storage of the syringes prefilled with diluent. Various RTS across all four services have their respective routines to best fit their vaccination requirements. Currently, there are no available data on the sterility status of the diluent prepared using these various routines before they are used to reconstitute vaccines. ⋯ Our results demonstrate that in spite of variations in current practices used in various RTS, the diluent in the prefilled syringe tested from each site maintains its sterility and was determined to be safe for use in military health system-wide vaccine reconstitution.