Entry‐Level Forward Surgical Team Training in 5th Grade Students of Second Military Medical University of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army

Abstract

Background Forward surgical team (FST) is a highly mobile team for surgical missions in battlefield. FST training has been well held in many western countries. However, such training in Chinese army is far from satisfaction. Methods and Results Relying on Second Military Medical University and its affiliated hospitals, we are launching an entry-level training program for 5th grade students, in order to improve their understandings on basic concepts of FST, as well as their abilities to complete surgical missions on battlefield.Conclusions In this article, we are going to introduce our training facilities as well as our training methods in our training program.

Entry-Level Forward Surgical Team Training Is Associated with Increased Confidence of Primary Combat Surgeons

“…Entry-level FST training program was devised as a 30-day program composed of a multimodality combination of didactic lectures, clinical practices and standardized evaluations [6]. Trainees were taught the fundamental FST skills including life-saving surgery, damage control surgery and other combat casualty care skills, and will be trained as teams to perform surgical missions efficiently on the bat- This study was for evaluating on a 5-point Likert scale the benefits of entry-level FST training and conventional surgery training in improving primary combat surgeons' confidence with combat medical skills (1 = not beneficial, 2 = mildly beneficial, 3 = moderately beneficial, 4 = considerably beneficial, 5 = extremely beneficial), which includes 2 major and 10 small skills sets (Table 1) based on the literature [5] [7] [8] [9] and our practice.…”

“…Under such circumstances, in recent years, we have established an entry-level FST training program in a Chinese military medical university for the 5th grade students, equal to the last year of the undergraduate program in the Chinese medical education model, who have already finished and passed the theoretical courses of medicine and are with some basic surgical skills [6]. These students would be deployed to different places of military medical services as primary combat surgeons.…”