WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio -- The 445th Airlift Wing hosted the Air Force Reserve Command Developing Resilient Leaders 4N0 (aerospace medical service career field) scenario build workshop July 26-28, 2022. Participants included seven medical career reservists not only from the 445th Aeromedical Staging and 445th Aerospace Medicine Squadrons but also from Luke Air Force Base, Arizona; Keesler Air Force Base, Mississippi; Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama; Travis Air Force Base, California; and Minneapolis-St. Paul Air Reserve Station, Minnesota.
Chief Master Sgt. Kenneth Heng, IMA to the 4N functional manger, AFRC, and Senior Master Sgt. Lauren Hawkins, 445th ASTS nursing services superintendent, hosted the event.
The goal of the program is to develop real-world scenarios for their career field that will allow them to respond appropriately to stressful situations they may encounter while performing their duties.
“This workshop is intended to build scenarios for the 4N career field and facilitate developing resilient leaders through stress inoculation training and scenarios,” Hawkins said. “Three teams had to develop scenarios that could be taken back to their unit and implemented during UTAs (unit training assemblies).”
Col. Sandra Vandiviere, chief, resilience and development division, AFRC, and Chief Master Sgt. Jonathan Rapelje, Developing Resilient Leaders, SEL, AFRC, spoke to the group via Microsoft TEAMS, providing the group information about the intent of the program and its history.
Chief Rapelje said the concept is to create stress inoculation scenarios and include them in training, not add additional training requirements for the Airmen thus bolstering their competence in skills and leadership, confidence in self and team and a conscientious mindset for accomplishing the mission and caring for self and people within the confines of block UTA training.
For this workshop, Chief Heng said the 4N0 career field was the focus and is one of five AFSCs currently field testing the integration of stress inoculation scenario-based training with Major Command (MAJCOM) functional managers oversight. The other four AFSCs are 2T2- air transportation, 3E3-structural, 3F0-personnel and 3P0-security forces.
“In order to expand the program, we need to build scenarios and grow the trainer pool at all units,” Chief Heng said.
Chief Heng said the three teams filtered their scenarios to Staff Sgt. Sydney Whiteis, 934th Security Forces Squadron installation patrol, Minneapolis. Whiteis provided a quality check for each scenario developed by the subject matter experts (SMEs), making sure it’s understandable and has no acronyms not understood.
At the end of the workshop, the teams came up with 11 scenarios.
One scenario generated by one of the team was abdominal discomfort. Two trainees and a lead medic have a patient brought in with abdominal discomfort. The first stressor thrown at the two trainees is the lead medic has to leave for a few minutes. The second stressor is the lead medic doesn’t come back and the patient’s pain intensifies. How do they handle the situation? What can they do in this type of situation?
“Training has always been basic, not challenging and some real-world situations that come up during a deployment are not covered,” said Master Sgt. Cynthia Russold, 908th ASTS. “Our deployers needed something like this to learn about different stressors and scenarios they could face and how to handle it,” Russold said.
The last day of the workshop not only brought the attendees new scenarios they can take back to their unit, but a lasting bond with each other if faced with a new situation.
“Another take away from this workshop is building networks with each other. Another unit may have fixed a problem that out unit may be facing. Now we can talk with each other and share information to help each other face that situation and deal with it,” Hawkins said.