Academic psychiatry : the journal of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training and the Association for Academic Psychiatry
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Large-scale high-fidelity casualty simulation and exposure to realistic environmental stressors in Operation Bushmaster represents a unique teaching environment that challenges military medical students to apply skills in assessment and acute management of stress responses. While this training event is specific to military medical students, the skills demonstrated could be readily applied in natural disaster or other mass civilian casualties. ⋯ Doing so exposes students to decision making in a disaster where the number of patients exceeds available resources and damage to infrastructure may limit their capabilities. Our experience with large-scale simulation suggests that this is an effective teaching tool.