This week, many reservists with the 446th Airlift Wing returned to Joint Base Lewis-McChord after spending long days and nights training at Operation Global Medic, conducted at Fort McCoy, Wis. and the Pittsburgh IAP Air Reserve Station.

Global Medic is an annual joint-reserve field training exercise designed to simulate all facets of combat theater aeromedical evacuation support. With such a large percentage of medical providers and technicians staffed in the reserves as opposed to active-duty, such an intense training event is necessary to ensure that combat medical care is efficient and effectual.

"Essentially, we simulate the patient movement from the point of injury through the entire treatment process, from he or she being medevaced to a hospital, to actually being treated and then, eventually, the arrangements that are made to move them to a more permanent medical facility," explained Capt. Todd Lamphere, a medical administrator with the 446th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron.

Lamphere, who has attended Global Medic four times - although he spent 2012 deployed and employing these practices in real life - spent this year's session embedded with the Army's 865th Combat Support Hospital serving as a liaison officer.

"Global Medic is a chance for multi-services (Army, Air Force, Navy) to integrate medical operational trainings. In this particular exercise, we simulated moving them from a combat zone to Landstuhl, Germany," he said. "My role was to facilitate the movements between the services, so that the patient has a seamless transition from Army care into the Air Force's aeromedical evacuation."

Overall, Lamphere found the scenarios and exercises to be realistic and felt that everything was even more seamless than ever before.

"The real benefit for the reservists is to retrain on how patients flow through the military medical system and how to handle combat injuries specifically, even though the reservist clinicians often already have experience working with trauma in their civilian jobs," Lamphere said.

"I know we say ‘one team, one fight', but you really get to see that happen here," he concluded.

While the 446th AES routinely attends Global Medic, this year, the 446th also sent airmen from its Force Support Squadron and Services personnel in order to continue on at the highest level of training and preparedness.

"We wanted to get our folks the training and experience in what is purely a training experience first," said Chief Master Sgt. Janice Kallinen, the 446th FSS superintendent, who attended Global Medic as an evaluator this year.

"One of the biggest things was that they realized the true definition of having to stay flexible," she said.

In a video interview conducted by the 4th Combat Camera Squadron (March Air Reserve Base, Calif.), Master Sgt. Robert Shulman, who served as the 446th FSS sustainment services team lead for Global Medic, agreed.

"Our greatest challenge was that things happen spur of the moment out here and we're asked to just get it done," Shulman stated. "We were able to overcome that challenge."

In fact, for many of the FSS reservists she evaluated, this was their first real training exercise and so they were exposed to a lot of unfamiliar settings and obstacles.

"What they thought they understood became reality while they were out there. They now understand what ‘field conditions' means," Kallinen joked.

However, Kallinen was quick to add that she was impressed with what her team did and stated that she won't hesitate to bring them back again next year.

Photo: U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Esther Aubert, 446th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron, McChord Air Force Base, left, an Observer Controller for aeromedical evacuation training, briefs Brig. Gen. Lisa Naftzger-Kang, Mobilization Assistant to the Air Force Deputy Surgeon General, Office of the Surgeon General, Headquarters U.S. Air Force, Falls Church, Va., and Capt. Donna Johnson, 94th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron, Dobbins Air Reserve Base, Ga., in support of Warrior Exercise 86-13-01 (WAREX)/Exercise Global Medic, Fort McCoy, Wis., July 27, 2013.