Imagine a kitchen without a countertop or a garage without a space for its tools and nothing but the floor as a workspace. This is how Ground Surgical Teams have worked for years, but engineers from the 711th Human Performance Wing, part of the Air Force Research Laboratory, are addressing this issue. Two 711th HPW teams created a prototype of a more efficient workstation for clinicians to use in austere environments to significantly improve patient care.
"A GST is an expeditionary force that typically is deployed to a very austere environment to treat critical casualty patients and stabilize them for further definitive care," said Dr. Gregory Burnett, lead engineer, product development branch, 711th HPW Airman Biosciences Division.
Accordingly, anything the GST needs for stabilizing patients must be brought with them, meaning these teams sometimes work with little to no resources, such as tables, hooks and other common equipment in austere environments.
Competition commences
While deployed to such an environment, Maj. Thomas Heering, 711th HPW austere anesthesia cadre for the GST, had an idea that later became a tangible product: a Tactical Anesthesia Workstation.
"This idea originated around when I was deployed in 2019-2020 to an austere surgical environment and we were taking care of trauma victims," Heering said. "There was no way of organizing all of our equipment like the ventilator, suction and IVs in an efficient and safe manner. We were tripping over a lot of the things that we were trying to manipulate in order to care for the patient."
Heering returned from his deployment and was stationed at the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine, one of two mission units in the 711th HPW, where he began training anesthesia providers. When he noticed the same issues in the training environment, he realized the need to improve patient care.
"So I entered an idea to the Air Force Materiel Command's Spark Tank competition," he said.
The idea was recognized in the top five, and the semifinalists presented their ideas to a panel of leaders during the AFMC Senior Leader Conference in October 2021. While TAW was not chosen, senior leadership directed it through AFRL for engineering support where it flowed down to the Rapid Prototyping Cell, which is part of the product development branch within the 711th HPW's Airman Biosciences Division.
Engineers' creation
Heering's initial idea was simple. He wanted an elevated area to easily access items.
"It made me really think, as a clinician, what sort of movements do I make, what sort of things do I need to achieve before inducing a patient with anesthesia before a procedure?" he said.
Working with the RPC team, Heering found improvement areas by asking himself various questions.
"What am I doing to hurt myself or potentially hurt the patient by taking my eyes off the table by bending down to adjust settings or look at medications?" Heering said. "Now I have a whole workspace. What does that do to improve my efficiency in drawing up the proper medications and having them readily available for the patient? These guys helped me realize by offering their engineering brain to my clinician brain."
The team of engineers included three RPC engineers from the 711th HPW: 2nd Lt. Stevan Gallegos, special warfare mechanical engineer; 1st Lt. Hannah Lyness, special warfare mechanical engineer; and Peter Voland, a Ball Aerospace contractor; and Nathan Stover, the RPC tech lead. This collaboration between the GST cadre at USAFSAM and the RPC team rapidly produced three prototypes in one month and inserted them into the GST's phase one training course at USAFSAM.
Heering's work with the RPC team resulted in a prototype that exceeded the original request and met the goal of lifting everything off the ground to provide an efficient workstation.
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