That was one of the strongest messages from today’s SAPA panel on Large-Scale Combat Operations and the Role of Physician Associates in the Future Fight.

Cross-train. Continue to practice. Learn how to lead, advise, and remain effective when the environment, and the patient, does not follow the plan.

In austere settings, you will not always see healthy patients with straightforward problems. You will see complex, undifferentiated patients while managing limited resources, prolonged care, autonomous evacuation decisions, and systems that may no longer function as expected.

That is when we must go back to the basics and rely on three things:

Time. Knowledge. Resources.

Use the two you have to help obtain the one you do not.

Accept appropriate risk while you still have supervision. Find mentors. Ask where your shortcomings are. Expand your baseline before you are expected to operate independently.

Because you do not need medicine, until you need medicine. And when that moment comes, preparation matters.

Thank you to COL James Jones, COL Tim Jayne, COL Paul Carson, and COL Joe Costello for sharing their experience and challenging us to prepare for the realities of the future fight.

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