Staying at the Cutting Edge: Partnership With a Level 1 Trauma Center Improves Clinical Currency and Wartime Readiness for Military Surgeons.

INTRODUCTION: Surgical currency is a critical component of medical corps readiness. We report a review of surgeons embedded into a civilian institution and analyze whether this improves surgical currency and wartime readiness.

METHODS: Patient management and operative volume were acquired from four surgeons embedded at a civilian institution and compared to operative case loads of surgeons based at a military treatment facility (MTF).

RESULTS: The surgeons embedded in the civilian institution had a mean of 49.3 cases compared to a mean of 8.3 cases for surgeons at the MTF over this 6-month period. In addition, the embedded surgeons obtained 44.4 to 94.7% of these cases during their civilian experience as opposed to cases done at the MTF. The cases performed by the embedded orthopedic surgeon (n = 247) was over 20 times the mean number of cases (mean = 12) performed at the MTF. Over a 6-month period, the trauma surgeon and general surgeon each evaluated 150 and 170 new trauma patients, respectively. In addition, the trauma/critical care surgeon cared for 250 critical care patients over this same 6-month period.

CONCLUSION: This study demonstrates that embedding surgeons into a civilian institution allows them to maintain skill sets critical for currency and wartime readiness.