The Carolina MEdIC program at UNC Health offers North Carolina-based military medics, nurses, and physicians on-the-job training in the emergency department, as well as the burn and surgical units at UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill.
As a code blue alarm sounded at UNC Health in Chapel Hill one November morning, about a dozen healthcare staff working across the hospital rushed to an emergency department exam room to provide aid. Within just a couple of minutes, physicians, nurses, and even security officers arrived to discover a mock drill in progress. Standing over the mock patient, they watched a young U.S. Army medic administer chest compressions for what turned out to be his first experience in reviving a patient on the brink of death.
“I was nervous, and then I was just kind of going through the steps,” explains Private First-Class Charles Jameson, a medic with Fort Bragg who is among the first group of 18th Airborne soldiers to receive trauma training before deployment at UNC Health. Jameson, as well as a Fort Bragg emergency medicine physician, nurse, and other medics, are part of the Carolina MEdIC program. Each soldier spends time learning about trauma care in several areas of the hospital, including the emergency department, burn intensive care unit (BICU), post-anesthesia care unit (PACU), and surgical trauma intensive care unit (SICU).
“We’re fortunate at UNC to be a large level one trauma center, so our patient volume, complexity, and acuity is something that is challenging to find at many of the military hospitals outside of the largest,” explains Carolina MEdIC Executive Director Dr. Matthew Eckert, a retired Army surgeon who now leads trauma and acute surgery at UNC Health. “The medics, physicians, and nurses come here to practice their skills and maintain their peak readiness. So, when they’re called upon, they’re ready to perform.”
The UNC School of Medicine was foundational in the development of the Carolina MEdIC program. UNC Health launched the program on Veterans Day in 2020. In addition to the medic training, nearly 20 active-duty Army and Navy doctors and nurses are assigned to UNC full-time. Each of them sees patients, teaches at UNC’s School of Medicine, and works with the medics to help them adapt what they learn in Chapel Hill to what they might experience while on a future deployment.
“We think that we have the best learning lab available for soldiers to practice the skills that they need to effectively function on the battlefield,” explains Carolina MEdIC program manager Nathan Stokes. “We have one of the busiest burn centers in the southeastern United States, and those patients are able to give our military learners an opportunity to work with high acuity burn patients that they wouldn’t be able to replicate anywhere else.”
In addition to gaining knowledge, the soldiers also gain a unique perspective of what it will feel like to face trauma in a combat zone. “The stress level is really hard to reproduce unless you’re seeing patients who are acutely injured or ill,” explains Dr. Eckert. “That’s one of the benefits of the rotation. Particularly, the more time they can spend here, the better, so that sort of shock to their system is a little less significant, and they can really focus on what they need to do at that time, a patient’s need.”
Private First-Class Jameson is looking forward to applying his experience at UNC Health to his first deployment. “I feel a lot more confident,” Jameson said. “This is really my first time taking patients, so it’s good to be able to take what I learned, so I can know how to save lives in the future.”
Media contact: Nancy Bostrom, Manager, Research & National News, UNC Health | UNC School of Medicine