MEDEVAC Matters

“The NATO Military Medicine Center of Excellence Training Branch started the development of the Patient Evacuation Coordination Cell (PECC) Course with a Course Design Meeting on 30 January – 03 February 2012.

The design meeting was based on a previous discussion with the German Armed Forces Medical Academy Training Centre (Feldkirchen, DEU) personnel, where the counterparts agreed on the frame of the cooperation. This new course will be the 8th official NATON MILMED COE course with the dedicated course number COE-MED-M4-008.

The aim of the course is to provide knowledge and to exercise skills required to effectively work in a Patient Evacuation Coordination Cell (PECC) and to enable participants to achieve and sustain situational awareness in a multinational operational environment at all times. The main Learning Objectives for the course are: “understand the NATO medical support system in multinational operations”; “understand functions, responsibilities and tasks of the PECC in a NATO multinational operational environment” and “how, where and when to collect and manage required information to achieve situational awareness to support the PECC capability (might be better) functionality “.

With the support of CZE, DEU, GBR, HUN, ITA and NLD subject matter experts, the design team created the course curriculum and agreed on the number of students and iterations. The venue is offered by the German Armed Forces Medical Service. The Bundeswehr Medical Academy runs a PECC Simulation capability in Foenldtakcirtchen which will host this training. The curriculum includes theoretical lessons, table top exercises and practical training in the PECC simulator. The course concept will be tested in accordance with respective NATO regulations in a PILOT course between 14-18 May 2012 in Feldkirchen, Germany.”

The announcement can be read here:  NATO PECC Course development has started for rollout in 2012.

Comment

NATO is responsible for managing the MEDEVAC and medical care for all troops in Afghanistan. Although U.S. Army MEDEVAC assets had been integrated into the Army’s Combat Aviation Brigades, it took a field study by members of the Royal Army Medical Corps in Regional Command – South in the summer of 2007 to highlight the inefficiencies in housing the medical people involved in MEDEVAC operations in buildings separate from the combat aviation control center:

In order to optimize MEDEVAC, during the Mission Rehearsal Exercise for Headquarters RC-S, the CJOC [Combined Joint Operations Center] Director agreed to move the Medical Operations staff for this deployment from a building a short distance away within the RC-S complex into the CJOC. The purpose was to improve situational awareness and, critically, integration with other staff involved in the management of incidents, especially the J3 Current Operations and Aviation controllers.

[snip]

Whereas it would seem intuitively right that medical staff should be within the Operations Room when casualties require urgent evacuation, this audit demonstrates that such co-location promotes integration of incident response as well as improving situational awareness for the medical elements supporting the force.