City Rounds

The United States Navy Opens a Trauma Training Center at the LAC+USC Medical Center to Increase Preparedness of Medical Staff Service-Wide.

by Jon Nalick

To ensure that injured forces in the field receive the best emergency trauma treatment possible, the U.S. Navy opened a special training center for its medical personnel at LAC+USC Medical Center.


At a ceremony in December 2002, officials from the Navy and LAC+USC announced the creation of the Navy Trauma Training Center, which will train corpsmen, nurses and physicians supporting the Navy and Marine Corps.
Visiting medical personnel serve 30-day rotations for intensive classroom and hands-on education at the center, which is housed on the sixth floor of General Hospital and includes a permanent 10-person multidisciplinary staff.
The first group to receive training arrived in September 2002.


Demetrios Demetriades, M.D., professor of surgery and chief of trauma and critical care, says that LAC+USC was chosen over 63 other hospitals nationwide because of the volume and types of surgeries performed there, as well as the volume of clinical research produced by its physicians.


He says the collaboration greatly benefits both parties, with naval medical teams receiving extensive, specialized training and with LAC+USC gaining full-time physicians and nurses who are paid by the Navy.


“And besides being a benefit to the Navy and USC and LAC+USC, we really see this as a national contribution,” Demetriades says.


LAC+USC Medical Center is one of the nation’s largest, busiest, most advanced civilian medical centers, seeing an average of 20 major penetrating and blunt trauma wounds and injuries every day. Often, these are gunshot or knife wounds that would be expected in a major metropolitan area. The number and type of injuries are rough approximations of what deployed forces might see in the field.


Cdr. Peter Rhee, M.C., U.S.N., a Navy surgeon, heads the Navy program and says that for that reason, the benefits of the hands-on trauma training at LAC+USC “cannot be overstated.”


Capt. H.R. Bowman, a member of the Navy Medical Corps who completed the course, agrees.


“Every corpsman, nurse or physician is potentially deployable anywhere the Navy and Marine Corps may be needed. The level of trauma training I received allows me to better treat patients—whether I’m in Los Angeles or Afghanistan, or during a humanitarian mission to Latin America,” Bohman says.


Captain Maureen Kowba, N.C., U.S.N., Commanding Officer of the Naval School of Health Sciences, San Diego, oversees the Navy Trauma Training Center. Rear Admiral James A. Johnson, Commander of the Naval Medical Center, San Diego, notes that the cooperation between the Navy and the County of Los Angeles benefits all concerned.


“The training our healthcare providers gain saves lives around the world, and certainly in Los Angeles where they augment the Medical Center staff, caring for the citizens who come into the ER,” Johnson says.
The Navy Trauma Training Center is the only one of its type in the Navy and the trauma team graduates are already bringing their newly enhanced skills to the fleet.