JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-FORT SAM HOUSTON, Texas –
The Navy Medicine Training Support Center cohosted Bexar County educators for a tour of the Medical Education and Training Campus at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston July 15.
This is the second consecutive year Navy Medicine commands have hosted this event as part of Alamo Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, or STEM, Workforce Coalition efforts, which included a visit to the Naval Medical Research Unit San Antonio, or NAMRU-SA.
Upon arrival, the educators were able to speak with a Navy Recruiting District San Antonio, or NRD-SA, recruiter, who is among the Sailors who service the area of the schools represented. This brief was structured to allow the educators and counselors an opportunity to ask questions about initial-entry requirements, incentives, and education benefits offered to their students upon enlisting. The briefs following allowed the educators to receive insight on the training Sailors, Airmen and Soldiers receive at the Medical Education and Training Campus.
“Here at the METC, we focus a lot of attention on making sure the service members still know how to be a Soldier, Sailor, Airman,” said Keith Hall, Strategic Planning and Partnerships Program manager. “We are training them to understand rank structure, training alongside other branches of services helping them to be comfortable when it matters. We train for the mission and educate for a lifetime of service. METC has 49 programs of instruction. On any given day, we see about 5,500 students, which translates to enough people to staff about four 300-bed hospitals.”
Hall also informed the educators about the 36 consolidated programs and the credentials students are eligible to receive while training at the METC.
“We work with colleges and universities in the nation to develop degree bridge pathways for our service members,” Hall said. “This means they’ll allow military students who graduate from the METC to attend their colleges and universities and not have to do the same work that they’ve already done here. They go into these colleges with a ‘head start’ already being pre-granted 18-30 credit hours, depending on their program, so they can continue where they left off.”
After the briefs, the visitors spoke with Navy instructors from the Radiology and Surgical Technologist programs and observed students performing mock surgeries in the operating rooms.
The last stop on the METC tour was Military Instructional Facility Four, named Anderson Hall, where the educators were presented an overview of the Tactical Combat Casualty Care, or TCCC, portion of the Hospital Corpsman Basic program and toured the spaces where the students put all their training into action during a simulated mass casualty event.
The visit concluded with a panel sat by five Hospital Corpsman Basic instructors. The instructors opened the panel with introductions and gave the guests a brief overview of their Navy careers to better direct their questions.