Navy's top doc addresses newest undersea medical professionals
Groton — The Navy's top doctor addressed the graduating class of the Naval Undersea Medical Institute Friday, and explained to the audience that the medical support for a submarine's crew is the responsibility of "several people."
"It falls on the shoulders of the doctor on the submarine, the nurse on the submarine, the dentist on the submarine, the pharmacist on the submarine, the spiritual counselor on the submarine," said Vice Adm. Matthew Nathan, surgeon general of the Navy and Chief of the Navy's Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. "It falls on the shoulders of the medical administrator on the submarine."
"Oh, by the way," he continued, before emphasizing, "that's one person that does all of those duties."
Nathan gave the keynote address Friday outside of the Submarine Force Library and Museum to the latest class to graduate from the Naval Undersea Medical Institute.
The seven Navy corpsmen will be assigned to nuclear-powered submarines homeported in Groton, Bangor, Wash., and Pearl Harbor, where each will be the sole medical professional on board.
"They have the most rigorous medical training that we give any enlisted individual in the United States Navy," Nathan said during a brief interview after the graduation.
NUMI is the source of training for submarine force independent duty corpsmen, radiation health technicians, undersea medical officer candidates and radiation health officers.
NUMI has, on average, four graduating classes a year, with a maximum of 15 people per class, excluding surface IDCs who go through a different conversion process to serve on submarines.
It won't be the first time Chief Hospital Corpsman Nicholas Sanderson will be underway on a submarine. Sanderson is assigned to the USS New Mexico, homeported in Groton.
At the age of 10, Sanderson spent four days on the USS Newport News, to which his father, retired Navy Master Chief Edward Sanderson, was assigned, as it traveled from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to Norfolk, Va.
"My dad had to find me quite a bit 'cause I was kind of lost on the boat, you know, doing stuff with the other guys," Sanderson said Friday after graduating.
Soon, Sanderson will responsible for taking care of New Mexico's crew, something the 13-month-long "very hard" program at NUMI prepared him for. During the program, which features three phases, the corpsmen saw more of each other than their families. They relied heavily on each other, Sanderson said, and studied together on weekends and late into the night.
Sanderson was planning to enjoy some leave time "decompressing" and spending time with his family before reporting to the New Mexico. He and his wife, Michelle, have five children spanning in age from 2 to 11.
The corpsmen were given 16 fictitious crew members for whom they managed health records, and were given assignments based on scenarios that could happen to members on a daily basis on a submarine.
They were taught skills such as how to perform emergency dentistry procedures and what to do in the case of hemorrhaging or a collapsed lung. They're trained to recognize neurological disorders and how to diagnose chest pain.
They also learn a lot about emotional health, Nathan said in a brief interview after the graduation, "because we've learned now more than ever that the emotional health of the sailors is as important as their physical well-being."
"What we've always relied on in the submarine force is the honor system that every sailor is very much upfront with how they're performing, how they're doing, how they're feeling, because we need everybody bringing their A-game all the time," Nathan said. "Another job of these docs is to look at a sailor and say 'I'm not so sure you're on your game today. How are you feeling?' And then telling the skipper this particular sailor needs a break or this particular sailor needs to recuperate."
Of course doing all this on a submarine provides another layer of intricacy to an already detailed job. Every bit of space on a submarine has a purpose. The mess deck table, the biggest table on board, can be where emergency procedures are performed.
On a submarine, corpsmen can have to make a call about whether a medical situation is truly an emergency and whether a sailor needs to be taken off the boat, which could mean aborting the submarine's mission.
Submarine commanders, Nathan said, have frequently told him that "they've had medical issues occur on their ships where they have to determine whether or not they're going to abort the mission, which could be extremely expensive, consuming and put the mission at risk. They have relied on their IDCs to make that decision, sometimes a life or death (decision)."
He added that the commanders have told him "in hindsight" that the IDCs "were always right."
j.bergman@theday.com
Twitter: @JuliaSBergman
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