JBSA-FORT SAM HOUSTON –
Maj. John B. Robinson was named the recipient of the Surgeon General's 2015 Physician Assistant Recognition Award at a ceremony at Camp Bullis March 20.
Robinson is a physician assistant assigned to the Combat Medicine Department, Defense Medical Readiness Training Institute, under the Education and Training Direc¬torate, Defense Health Agency.
This annual award is a recogni¬tion by the Army Surgeon General to a physician assistant who has made a significant contribution to military medicine. Robinson has been assigned to DMRTI since 2012.
Lt. Col. Jeffrey Oliver, physician assistant consultant to Lt. Gen. Patricia Horoho, Army Surgeon General, presented Robinson the Office of the Surgeon General Certificate of Achievement and the Army Meritorious Service Medal.
Robinson was nominated for this honor by his commander at DMRTI, Col. John Garr.
"As the pre-hospital trauma coordinator, Joint Theatre Trauma System, the things you have done through DMRTI, Combat Casualty Care Course and downrange you have saved lives," Oliver said.
While serving as the Pre- Hospital Trauma Coordinator, Joint Theatre Trauma System and officer in charge, Combat Casualty Care Course, Robinson contributed to sustaining high casualty survival rates by implementing lessons learned and state of the art tech¬nologies in joint trauma training.
Robinson worked extensively with the U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, creat¬ing standard for point of injury medical docu¬mentation, analgesia and hemorrhage control.
He identified gaps in Role I pre-hospital trauma care delivery and facilitated the implemen¬tation of workable solu¬tions. He spearheaded the use of the Tactical Combat Casualty Care After Action Report to populate the pre-hospital trauma registry. While doing so, Robinson identi¬fied several important recurring gaps in care.
Robinson noted that Soldiers and coalition partners continued to die unnecessarily from penetrating injuries to non-compressible areas. He traveled to every American Role I Forward Operating Base in theatre, distributing junctional tourniquets and train¬ing every first responder, medic and medical officer.
In doing so, he im¬proved the proficiency on these innovate devices, improved hemorrhage control and saved numer¬ous lives.
In order to ensure these new initiatives and real time lessons learned reached the desired audi¬ence, Robinson created the Combat Medic Confer¬ence. This bi-monthly con¬ference was conducted on Defense Connect Online enabling Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines to participate from virtually anywhere in the battle space. These comprehen¬sive case reviews identi¬fied process issues that led to substantial improve¬ments in point of injury trauma care.
Recognized as a subject matter expert, the mili¬tary medical community invited him to present his work to the Military Health System Research Symposium and subse¬quently to the Commit¬tee on Tactical Combat Casualty Care.
Through his exceptional leadership as officer in charge of the Combat Casualty Care Course, Robinson was key in implementing multiple initiatives, advancing the DMRTI's mission of en¬hancing operational and sustainment capabilities through joint, interagency, intergovernmental, and multinational medical training to 1,000 tri-service, Department of Defense and international medical officers.
He also developed and implemented 27 complex lesson plans, focusing on dynamic joint medi¬cal doctrine. Integrating real-world experiences, he used combat lessons learned to enhance sce¬narios ensuring medi¬cal providers received realistic Role I and II training; his contributions increased employment medical readiness across the force and bolstering downrange survival rates.
(Col. John Garr, commander, DMRTI, contributed to this article)