Seconds ticked by as a hospital corpsman, with a needle in hand, squatted beside his patient in hangar bay one aboard the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) (Ike). With practiced ease, he inserted it with precision into the patient's arm and taped the IV in place.

Two teammates rushed to the corpsman's side and helped lift the patient into the litter. After they swiftly crossed the hangar bay, one teammate carefully tied a tourniquet on the right leg of the patient and checked the tightness. The team lifted the litter one last time and raced to the finish line with their patient in tow. They cheered victoriously, realizing they had won the 2017 June Medical Olympics.

"I started an education program back at the beginning of our last deployment," said Lt. Pokorny Douglas, one of Ike's surgeons. "It was good, but you could tell that people were getting bored with just a presentation on a skill. So we needed to put together something to make it more interesting."

With that idea, the Medical Olympics was born, a semi-annual competition focused on efficiently training corpsmen in a safe environment. A handful of teams competed against one another in a variety of events such as suturing techniques, stretcher bearer training and physical therapy exercises.

"Putting on a competition just made our corpsmen try harder and put in more effort to learn the skills," Douglas said. "Overall, it made it more fun for them."

Douglas' overall goal was to keep Ike's corpsmen sharp and primed while instilling a sense of teamwork in the Medical department.

"The Olympics promotes camaraderie and teamwork," said Hopsital Corpsman 3rd Class Pablo Pellecer. "We learn how to work with each other efficiently; to not go too fast, but to maintain a steady pace and maintain effectiveness."

The competition not only unites the corpsmen, but also puts them in a number of scenarios geared towards real-world situations.

"This training keeps us mentally fit," said Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Roosevelt Villanueva. "We're always dealing with all types of patients and problems. We see everything from emergency trauma to cold-like symptoms."

The training is meant to mentally stimulate the corpsmen so that they can address illness and injury competently and eloquently, and it also prepares them to respond to emergencies outside of their department.

"We also have to keep physically fit to be able to respond anywhere on the ship," Villanueva said. "It doesn't matter if we're up on the O10 level or down in the reactor spaces; we have to be able to extract the patient safely and efficiently."

The competitive yet fun training benefits the corpsmen's skillset, which transfers to the rest of the ship's safety and health.

"We do stretcher-bearer training every day," said
Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class Andrew Garcia, "That requires us to be able to teach and show other people around the ship the proper way to transport and treat those patients. We have to be able to demonstrate those life-saving techniques with confidence, and training like this gives us that confidence."

Saving lives is something that Ike's corpsmen are passionate about and training events such as the Medical Olympics helps the medical department maintain the skills needed to make that happen.

"We're here to provide emergency care," said Villanueva. "I want everyone on the ship to be certain that we have the capability to save their life."

Ike is underway during the sustainment phase of the Optimized Fleet Response Plan (OFRP).

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