Highly Realistic, Immersive Training for Navy Corpsmen: Preliminary Results

Abstract

Highly realistic, immersive training has been developed for Navy corpsmen based on the success of the Infantry Immersion Trainer. This new training is built around scenarios that are designed to depict real-life, operational situations. Each scenario used in the training includes sights, sounds, smells, and distractions to simulate realistic and challenging combat situations. The primary objective of this study was to assess corpsmen participants' satisfaction with highly realistic training. The study sample consisted of 434 male Navy service members attending Field Medical Training Battalion-West, Camp Pendleton, California. Corpsmen participants completed surveys after receiving the training. Participants expressed high levels of satisfaction with the training overall and with several specific elements of the training. The element of the training that the corpsmen rated the highest was the use of live actors. The vast majority of the participants reported that the training had increased their overall confidence about being successful corpsmen and had strengthened their confidence in their ability to provide care under pressure. Additional research should extend highly realistic training to other military medical provider populations.

Psychosocial Factors Associated with Resilience and Perceived Readiness Among Navy Corpsmen

“…13,38 Moreover, results from the larger study of which this effort was a part showed significant increases in corpsmen's occupational and task-specific self-efficacy as well as in their perceived readiness as a result of participating in highly realistic medical simulation training. 29,39 Taken together, these findings suggest that training and other interventions aimed at increasing corpsmen's self-efficacy have the potential to improve resilience and readiness in this understudied population.…”

“…The data presented in this paper were collected as part of a larger study. 29 The goal of the larger study was to assess the effectiveness of "highly realistic training," a medical simulation training that corpsmen participated in while attending FMTB-West. The purpose of the training was to better prepare corpsmen to provide medical care in combat zones and other operational settings.…”

Refining mass casualty plans with simulation-based iterative learning

“…The cost of high-fidelity mass casualty incident simulation is significant. 34,35 Therefore, achieving valuable learning at low cost is a transferable benefit for any hospital.…”

Evaluation of Highly Realistic Training for Independent Duty Corpsmen Students

“…The Navy has only recently implemented the use of highly realistic training for corpsmen. To our knowledge, this project and a related project by our research team (Booth-Kewley & McWhorter, 2014) are among the first to implement and evaluate highly realistic training for Navy corpsmen. In light of evidence that highly realistic training has a positive impact on corpsmen, it may be beneficial to extend the training to other groups of military medical providers (e.g., physicians, nurses).…”