As the University of Chicago Medicine’s Level 1 trauma center marks five years of service, it celebrates a key tool in its success: partnerships that provide new resources for the center and skills sustainment to members of the military.
For the past two years, the U.S. Army Medicine Department Military-Civilian Trauma Team Training (AMCT3) program has embedded medical personnel into the UChicago Medicine trauma team.
Members of the Army’s 759th Forward Resuscitative Surgical Team (FRST), based at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, integrate seamlessly with civilian counterparts to provide critical care to patients at the South Side academic medical center.
The Army team — which includes two trauma surgeons, an emergency medicine physician, a certificated registered nurse assistant, a critical care nurse and an emergency room nurse — help treat many patients who arrive at the hospital’s busy trauma center.
The patients include those with blunt or penetrating wounds. That means the FRST members sustain their trauma care skills – that they may need on a future battlefield – while providing more resources to the trauma center.
“When we opened the trauma center in 2018, taking care of those we serve on the South Side of Chicago was top of mind,” said Selwyn O. Rogers Jr., MD, MPH, founding director of the center. “But our secondary goals were to establish partnerships with bilateral benefits. This program has been an excellent example of that. We are providing a service to the Army while getting the benefit of additional resources to enhance our very busy trauma center on the South Side.”
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This story was first published by UChicago Medicine.
