OPERATIONAL MEDICINE AND PARARESCUE

Service Description

FEATURED SPEAKER: LTC. STEPHEN RUSH, MD-USAF PARARESCUE "We will review the operational and medical issues involved in a complicated open ocean parachute rescue mission to two severely burned patients; review some lessons learned from our experience in training for mass casualty incident management; and then summarize our philosophical approach to training operational medics to perform in dynamic and chaotic environments." LTC Stephen Rush joined the New York Air National Guard as a pararescue flight surgeon with the 103rd Rescue Squadron in 2007. His job was to train and sustain the medical readiness of PJs assigned to the 103rd. He became the medical director for all PJs in 2012. “There are four main features to my role as medical director,” Rush says. “One is operational medical readiness, which includes writing protocols, how to teach them, how to keep the medical handbook current and disseminating the information to the units. Another role is human performance optimization. In some ways PJs are highly trained athletes, and I try to find the best ways to keep them physically healthy. So we do a lot of injury prevention and physical conditioning work. A third role is dealing with mental health issues, which are similar to issues with civilian first responders. And finally there’s dealing with the aerospace medical issues of PJs. emsworld 8/17