For the next several months I’m being submerged into a training pipeline that is designed to get me spun up to the point of being a fully capable special ops flight doc. After completing the AMP course (aerospace medical primary) in San Antonio I move onto the first evolution in this training known as SERE school (survival, evasion, resistance, and escape) located at Fairchild AFB in Spokane Washington. Basically this is a month long course designed to give aircrew members or PJ (pararescue jumper) students all the tools needed to survive in any kind of scenario where a plane could go down anywhere in the world. Be in hostile or friendly territory. The course is broken into several different parts and will be the topic of the next few posts.
As far as the rest of the pipeline beyond SERE, the variety of courses is immense. There is a large list of both recommended and required things I need to complete before my first deployment, much of which probably wont get done. The schedule is in constant flux, but I know a couple for sure. I’m scheduled to do a course in how to manage and perform an aeromedical evacuation sometime in November along with a water survival course in Pensacola Florida.
In January I go to Baltimore for one month and work at the famous Shock Trauma hospital with the trauma surgery team, to well, learn trauma surgery. When I expressed my concern about only having one month to learn what sounds like crash course trauma surgery to one my commanders she told me with eyes that haven’t taken shit from anyone her whole career to have “sharp elbows”, and tell those Hopkin residents that I’m staff and to get out of my way. We’ll see how that one goes.
After that I theoretically have to go to a 45 day tactical school in Florida which has been informally called “door kicking school” where I learn how to do all the combatant stuff that I’m not supposed to be doing anyway. There are some other things in the works, a language school in Germany, a course to learn K-9 medicine, difficult airway courses, etc. I just hope by the end of all this I gain some kind of idea what my job description actually is because I’m still not 100% on that one.