Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston –
Army nutrition and diet therapy students at Fort Sam
Houston’s Medical Education and Training Campus conducted an Army situational
training exercise as their culminating training event before graduating as 68M
Nutrition Care Specialists.
The Feb. 22 exercise scenario involved a mass casualty
situation in the San Antonio area that required the METC campus to be activated
as an overflow patient hold and treatment facility.
The students were tasked to conduct nutrition screenings on
admitted patients, provide nutrition education to patients and ward staff,
ensure that patients were receiving the correct diets per their medical
condition and to provide patients with their modified therapeutic diets.
The students also faced challenges such as equipment
failures, loss of electronic medical charts, difficult patient personalities
and running out of nutrition formulas to support tube feeding.
“Students are graded on their ability to modify diets for
their patients, conduct patient education and their ability to think
critically,” said program NCO in charge Sgt. 1st Class Kathia McConnico.
“The situational exercise is also a leadership experience
and teambuilding exercise,” McConnico said.
The students are divided into teams with opportunities for
team leaders to take charge of their teams and accomplish the mission.
“Student leadership is naturally tested when stress is added
to the personalities of each student,” she added. “They each get an opportunity
to experience how challenging it can be to complete a mission, with a timeline,
while leading their peers.”
The diet office team conducted the nutrition screening,
patient education, verified the accuracy of the diets and served as the main
connecting points between the patients and the diet technicians preparing the
diets in the kitchen and patient tray service area.
The team leader had to ensure the patients were all screened
within a specified timeline, the patient consults were completed and the diets
were all delivered to the patients.
The kitchen and patient tray service team received the
patient diets from the team working in the diet office. They had a challenging
task, because in this scenario, the kitchen was not supplied to feed patients
during a mass casualty situation.
The team leader had to survey and organize available
ingredients and food items to support patient feeding while ensuring the food
was medically appropriate for the patients. This included utilizing the
Operational Rations-Unitized Group Ration that is typically utilized in a
combat support hospital. Since the UGR and field feeding are part of the Army
curriculum, it is available to the students and was incorporated into the
exercise.
Throughout the situational training exercise, the students
are expected to be dietitian extenders, since there is only one dietitian to
support the mission in this scenario. They were tested on their ability to
think critically while performing all essential program tasks utilizing all the
materials they used during training. Students also had to provide their
recommendations to the dietitian.
The nutrition and diet therapy program trains to standard
and the students may be faced with repeating tasks that they are not initially
successful at completing.
This exercise is conducted very early in the development and
implementation phase of the program, after just three STXs. Following each
iteration and after-action review, the situational exercise evolve to
incorporate more realistic training to facilitate meaningful learning. This
will include adding an exercise component at Camp Bullis utilizing a
containerized kitchen by September 2016.