Military medicine
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The purpose of this study was to conduct a general educational needs assessment to identify deficiencies in current Army pharmacy education while projecting future educational requirements based on changes in pharmacy practice and evolving demands of military medicine. ⋯ With modernized, relevant KSAs, the Army can measure and train a ready pharmacy force. Individual Critical Tasks augmented with KSAs are one potential approach we recommend as a strategy to improve Army pharmacist health profession education.
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Comparative Study
Comparison of Dental Emergencies Among U.S. Military and Civilian Personnel During Combat Operations in 2007-2009.
Information from published studies describing dental treatment of nonmilitary personnel in a military theater of operations is sparse. The primary objective of this study is to determine the number of dental emergencies (DEs) and the types of dental treatment rendered on non-U.S. military (civilian) personnel treated by Navy dentists in 2007-2008 in Iraq and 2009 in Afghanistan. The second objective is to compare the type of DE treatment procedures provided to civilian personnel to the type of DE treatment procedures performed on U.S. military personnel. ⋯ The primary group of civilians treated for DE in Afghanistan was U.S. civilian employees. The primary group of civilians treated for DE in Iraq were contract employees of the U.S. Government. The primary dental treatment of civilian beneficiaries in both the theaters of operation was oral surgery. This brings into question what dental fitness standards are there for primarily U.S. civilian and contract employees.
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Terrorist threats are a worldwide phenomenon. The injuries caused with military weapons or explosives are multiple and unusual for civilian care services. Damage control (DC) training has then become a critical need. In response to the November 2015 attacks, the French authorities launched a national DC training campaign for emergency care personnel. The aim was to describe the implementation of DC training campaign and its perception according to the respondent's profession, DC teaching levels, and the history of terrorist attacks in the last decade of the hospital center's activities. ⋯ The training of emergency personnel in DC is far from being generalized in France. Among the trained personnel, it was often deemed insufficient, in theory and in practice. There was an inequity of training in favor of those in teaching centers. It is therefore essential that training in DC techniques in France be continued, generalized, improved, and standardized throughout the country in order to guarantee an optimal response from the health care systems in the event of new terrorist attacks.
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The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between subjects' oral health characteristics and the incidence of a dental emergency over 1 year. ⋯ This study supports a relationship between demographics, oral health characteristics, and dental emergencies. Age may be related to service members entering the military with untreated or managed dental needs, notably around the age of third molar eruption. Sex differences may be related to willingness or preference to utilize non-emergency dental care visits. The inverse relationship between caries risk and dental emergencies could be due to identification and management of high caries risk patients. This project highlights the need for further study and increasingly discrete measurement of oral health care characteristics and coding for etiologies of dental emergencies.
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Military service members rely on upper body strength and power to accomplish tasks such as carrying heavy weapons and gear, rappelling, combat grappling, and marksmanship. Early identification of the factors that lead to reduced upper body strength and power would enable leadership to predict and mitigate aspects that decrease military operational readiness and increase injury risk. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between grip strength and upper body power in U.S. Infantry Marines. We hypothesized that dominant arm grip strength would show a strong positive correlation with upper body power and that the dominant arm would be more powerful than the non-dominant arm. ⋯ The results of this study suggest that grip strength is not predictive of upper body power and cannot be used as a stand-alone measure of physical readiness in a military unit. These findings do not, however, degrade the potential of both measures to predict and inform health status and physical readiness. Future prospective research should be conducted to determine if either of these measures can be used as indicators of performance and/or injury susceptibility and if limb dominance plays a role in injury incidence within the upper extremity.