The Army Reserve’s 945th Forward Surgical Team is heading to Afghanistan next year, and Mayo Clinic is playing a special role helping the unit prepare.
The 945th, commanded by Mayo family medicine physician and Col. Walter Franz, M.D., has been visiting the Mayo Clinic Multidisciplinary Simulation Center almost monthly for the past year to train for its upcoming deployment. The training helps the 945th’s members work together as a team and move quickly and effectively to care for patients, Dr. Franz says.
The 945th includes more than a dozen medical military trauma care specialists, roughly half from Minnesota and half from other states, including Rodney Noe, R.N., of the Mayo Clinic Health System in Eau Claire, Wis. The 945th previously served in Iraq.
The team “took over” the Mayo simulation center this past weekend and triaged and treated its high-tech mannequins like trauma casualties the 945th would care for in the field. Dr. Franz says the team’s ability to use the Mayo simulation center is unique among reserve units; most cannot take advantage of simulation-based training.
The 945th has based its simulation training at Mayo on data from 40,000 war casualties, the largest collection of “data of combat care that we’ve ever had,” Dr. Franz said in an interview with the Rochester Post-Bulletin.
The 945th next heads to the University of Miami for intensive trauma care training, including actual patient care, Dr. Franz says. The team’s Afghanistan deployment date hasn’t been announced; it likely will be in mid-2013, he says.
