Month: November 2023

Source: United States Navy

A mass casualty drill dubbed Operation Gray Dawn held Nov. 14, 2023, helped to identify issues and provide a timely trial – under fire – on dealing with a significant influx of wounded personnel.

As is the case for most emergency situations, insisted Terry Lerma, NHB emergency preparedness manager, such a scenario as this usually happens completely unexpected, unannounced and unforeseen.

Which is how some staff who found themselves abruptly thrust into action.

“I knew nothing about this drill,” exclaimed one nurse assigned to the Urgent Care Clinic.

“In emergency management preparedness, actual accidents and tragic incidents rarely announce themselves beforehand,” stated Lerma, noting that with the first part of the training done and the shooter neutralized, the second part was designed to test staff capability during the ofttimes chaotic crisis of dealing with a number of casualties.

NHB staff members focused on the multiple casualties in need of immediate medical assistance.

“Super impressed by everyone taking this drill seriously and making good decisions. There’s no battle plan that survives first contact with the enemy. Same scenario in an event like this,” said Dr. Elizabeth Gray, NHB Urgent Care Clinic physician, noting that Internal Medicine staff showed up in force and provide to be tremendous assets during the drill.

“They were a great force multiplier from the manpower pool to help with triage needs,” said Gray, who encouraged all participants that if they saw techniques and processes which were beneficial to annotate and pass on for future reference.

“There is always a lot of functionality which physicians and nurses don’t see but corpsman do. We need to share what worked well in treating the casualties,” added Gray. “The same goes for what didn’t work well.”

According to Lerma, the exercise provided valuable learning experience for hospital staff in coordinating, communicating and caring for the host of casualties.

All at once.

“We didn’t engage this as a full scale exercise. It was more a functional one which we used this as a learning process,” Lerma said.

There were 15 mock casualties suffering from gunshot wounds to fractured and shattered bones, along with one simulated fatality.

“I was charged with helping to maintain airwaves and assist with intubation on injured patients in the UCC,” said Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class Travis Mitchell, assigned to NHB Internal Medicine department.

When there is a mass casualty incident – defined as an emergency situation where NHB has to handle a surge of incoming patients more than the Urgent Care Clinic can timely respond – it’s an all-hands on deck obligation to provide support.

There are pre-designated assignments for the majority of staff such as manning the triage casualty receiving unit, handle staff tracking and help support in data gathering assistance.

Past mass casualty efforts have focused on dealing with a natural disaster like an earthquake to a human factor situation like a multiple vehicle rollover accident.

“As always, when an actual emergency happens, it won’t be at our convenience. It will be when we least expect it. We have to ready. Planning and training to prepare for that actual emergency will give us the experience needed to be able to handle whatever needs to be done,” said Lerma.

Source: United States Navy

Linnell and her team of Sailors flew to Kwajalein in early November to provide medical assistance and care for the residents of Ebeye recently, providing vision screenings and glasses dispensing to the Kwajalein Elementary School students, along with a dental team providing dental screenings and a cardiologist providing heart exams.
“I was able to deploy back in 2007 and 2009 and I waited until now to do it again,” said Linnell. “This is the best thing I’ve ever done in my 16 years in the Navy – the planning for the mission and the mission itself.”

Linnell explained that her team will go back to Majuro to perform vision screenings and glasses dispensing at the Lara Clinic as well as the Majuro Hospital. She said that the next stop on their Pacific tour will be the Solomon Islands where they will provide medical coverage for the Pacific Games. “I will be going to the outer islands to provide vision screenings again and glasses dispensing. It will be an adventure.”

The largest contingent of Sailors provided dental screenings and dental education to more than 800 students over two days on Ebeye, led by Lt. Cdr. Amie Heim, pediatric dentist with the USNS Mercy.

“For the dental component, we screened and treated about 800 children in the local community. We did exams to find out what kind of dental problems they might have or cavities or infections. We painted fluoride vitamins to make their teeth really strong and then provided dental education to try to teach kids the right way to brush and how to take care of their teeth. Then we used all that information to give to the local dentist at the Ebeye Hospital dental clinic where he will continue to do some of the treatment. We had one of our own dentists over the two days helping with the treatments as well.”

Heim said that this is her first Pacific Partnership mission but she deployed for the Continuing Promise mission last year on the sister hospital ship, the USNS Comfort.

“This is something I really enjoy doing,” said Heim. “In dental school, I always signed up for all the mission trips possible. I always raised my hand. It’s just an honor and a privilege to be able to do it on a much larger scale in the Navy. This time was even more exciting because I go to see it from the ground up in the role of a dental planner.”

Heim was here earlier this summer to meet people in the local community to figure out what the needs are here to come up with a plan together.

What was the response from the community like? “Oh my gosh, it was incredible,” Heim said. “All the kids running in the street after we did some of the education with the big toothbrush. They were so happy and everywhere we went they were welcoming and giving us high fives and saluting us.

“Honestly, I was so very touched by the ceremony at the hospital we attended and all the folks at the hospital and elementary school who came to thank us. From a place that, they will tell you that they don’t have a lot but they have big hearts, you could feel that today. It was just a real honor and a privilege to be able to be a part of that and give back to that community.”

The third aspect of the USNS Mercy visit to Ebeye was having a cardiologist conducting exams on the populace.

U.S. Navy Cdr. Matt Russell, cardiologist with the USNS Mercy, said there was a backlog of about 150 patients who need both pediatric and adult echocardiography.

“The first two days we spent doing mostly adults, looking for patients with heart issues,” Russell said. “In total we did 26 echocardiography studies and saw 26 patients and consultations over the two days. Today we saw 13 pediatric patients of varying conditions from congenital heart disease to rheumatic heart disease, ages 2-17.

Russell explained that this was his first Pacific Partnership. “Clinically, I get exposure to a lot of conditions that I wouldn’t normally see in the United States such as rheumatic heart disease or non-corrected congenital heart disease in kids. Personally these were just wonderful people that I’ve ever met and really terrific doctors. It was a privilege to work with them.”

Russell further explained that “they have a major need for cardiovascular studies and it’s unmet unfortunately. I think we made a dent in the number of echoes that they need and the number of consultations they need but I think they need more.”

Russell’s assistant, HM Ramoune Scarlett, a hospital corpsman from the USNS Mercy said that a lot of the patients aren’t sick right now but could be as adults.

“I think this is crucial to get that information out to help the providers here so they can start treatment now so in the long run they aren’t suffering,” said Scarlett who has done this for six years.

“As a technologist, I am the hands-on guy. I take the images and the doctor does the interpretation.”

Scarlett explained that this was the first time he has deployed in 12 years in the Navy. “I’m happy I came on this trip. You get to see why you are in healthcare. You get to see the why. Being here reminds me so much of being back home (in Jamaica) so it hits home for me being able to help people. Being able to go to poorer countries and identifying what they are going through. It just reinforced my why … as to why I am in healthcare.”

Source: United States Navy

Retired U.S. Navy Capt. Don Walsh, best known for his daring dive to the deepest spot on Earth, nearly 36,000 feet below the ocean’s surface, has died at age 92.

Walsh was a co-pilot of the Trieste bathyscaphe, a deep submergence vehicle acquired by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) in 1958. Two years later, on January 23, 1960, Walsh and Swiss engineer Jacques Piccard, son of the inventor of the bathyscaphe, became the first humans to descend into the Challenger Deep, located in the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench.

“ONR sponsored the Trieste, but it was then-Lt. Don Walsh who made the very daring decision to make the first descent into the deepest spot of the earth’s ocean. Walsh was a Navy officer, a submariner, an adventurer, and an oceanographer. To his family, we extend our deepest condolences and gratitude for allowing him to explore, and share his extraordinary experiences and knowledge with us,” said Chief of Naval Research Rear Adm. Kurt Rothenhaus.

Years later, Walsh described his dive with Piccard in a 2016 Future Force interview as “a pretty big deal” and a big relief to Adm. Arleigh Burke, who had greenlighted the expedition.

“Because he’d rolled the dice with us, just like ONR rolled the dice with us. He figured …they could probably do it. And we did it. And so he was pretty happy about that,” said Walsh.

Walsh’s journey to the Challenger Deep is still believed to hold the record for deepest dive yet in a manned vehicle, and ushered in a “golden age” of manned underwater exploration in the 1960s and 70s. Walsh and Piccard, though, saw little when they hit the ocean floor. They only had 20 minutes to survey their surroundings, which had become a cloud of debris, before heading back to the surface.

Walsh was a submariner, explorer and oceanographer, who also taught at the University of Southern California. His love of the ocean and advocacy for its exploration continued well after his Navy retirement in 1975.

In 2010, the U.S. Navy presented its highest civilian recognition, the Navy Distinguished Public Service Award, to Walsh for his achievement and service in the years following his Navy career. He had served as a U.S. policy adviser on State Department and federal science boards, authored more than 200 published contributions to marine literature and presented more than 1,500 lectures in 50 countries.

Source: United States Navy

As expected of a maturing and complex audit environment, the independent auditors issued a disclaimer of opinion on the FY 2023 Navy General Fund (GF) and DON Working Capital Fund (WCF) financial statements. The Marine Corps General Fund audit has been extended to February 2024 in an effort to achieve an audit opinion, the first of its kind for any Military Service.

The DON made substantial progress toward the transformation vision outlined in its Financial Management (FM) Strategy in FY 2023. The FM Strategy supports the FM workforce, drives accountability and fiscal discipline and further demonstrates the operational value of audit. The Audit Roadmap highlights interdependencies between business processes and needed system improvements and documents the path to achieving an audit opinion. Executing this strategy, along with the detailed Audit Roadmap, allows DON leadership to monitor progress in real time.

In FY 2023, the DON downgraded two significant audit findings, known as material weakness. The first is the GF and WCF Oversight and Monitoring material weakness, improving insights into the DON internal control environment and compliance with internal control requirements. The DON also downgraded the GF Fund Balance with Treasury, the Navy’s “cash,” material weakness one year ahead of schedule. These improvements demonstrate the DON’s commitment to improving its business operations and accelerating audit progress. In FY 2023, the DON also:

· Launched an enhanced training platform to support career development and prepare the workforce for the FM challenges of today and tomorrow.

· Enabled the FM workforce to focus on more complex and high-value analytical tasks through automation. The DON currently uses 168 bots, saving more than 160,000 labor hours that can now be directed to more value-added tasks.

· Sustained all prior year material weakness downgrades and closed more than 25 percent of its prior year audit findings.

· Sustained the lowest improper payment rate for military pay in the Department of Defense, demonstrating the DON’s commitment to taking care of its people.

· Improved transparency of its financial information through improvements in data quality and timeliness of reporting.

· Continued strengthening cybersecurity by automating system account provisioning, account removal and access reviews for two audit-relevant systems.

· Expanded the use of budget execution tools, providing real-time insight into the status of funds across the DON and allowing Commanders to optimize budgetary resources.

· Continued migration to the Navy’s Enterprise Resource Planning system and decommissioning of legacy systems, avoiding millions of dollars of cost.

The DON remains committed to building on these accomplishments and improving internal controls to address long-standing challenges to its business operations and ensure sound financial management.

The audit fosters a culture that encourages innovation, solves problems and achieves results to increase our lethality, improve readiness and get the most out of every dollar entrusted to us. The DON remains in synch with the Secretary of Defense Audit Priorities, including reporting a complete and accurate cash balance with the Department of Treasury and strengthening user access in our financial systems.

For more information, see the DON FY 2023 Agency Financial Report.

https://www.secnav.navy.mil/fmc/Pages/fr.aspx

Source: United States Navy

This test was executed with Sandia National Laboratories from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Wallops Flight Facility. Data collected from this test will be used to inform the development of the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) offensive hypersonic strike capability, MDA’s hypersonic defensive capability, and to mature other hypersonic technologies.

This test demonstrated advanced hypersonic technologies, capabilities, and prototype systems from partners across government, academia, and industry. During weapon system development, subscale tests such as this campaign fill a critical gap between ground testing and full system flight testing by allowing for experiments and prototypes to be flown in a realistic operating environment more frequently and affordably. The increased rate of testing and reduced costs of subscale flight testing supports the rapid maturation and transition of offensive and defensive hypersonic technologies.

This test is a component of the Multi-Service Advanced Capability Hypersonics Test Bed (MACH-TB) that accelerates U.S. hypersonic technology development and transition by providing an affordable, rapid hypersonic flight test capability for DoD programs, NASA, national labs, academia, and industry.

The MACH-TB program was initiated by the Navy CPS Program and NSWC Crane in 2022 to accelerate hypersonic technology development by increasing opportunities for testing of hypersonic technology. The program is being managed by OSD TRMC to ensure opportunities provided by MACH-TB can be leveraged across the entirety of DoD hypersonic efforts.