The Healthcare Simulation and Bioskills Training Center (HSBTC), or SIM Center, at Naval Medical Center Portsmouth offers STOMP, Simulation Training for Operational Medicine Providers, which serves to prepare medical interns for tours as general medical officers (GMOs) in the fleet.

STOMP was designed and implemented as a three-part simulation and didactic curriculum to support the training of future GMOs in expanding their primary care skills. The program was created in response to a perceived training gap that was noticed between year-long internship programs held at various military treatment facilities (MTF) and joining the fleet.

Capt. Michael Spooner, director of the HSBTC, and the co-creator and director of STOMP, was one of the doctors who recognized the growing need to bridge the gap between being an intern and being a doctor in the fleet.

"We recognized the need because internships across the country have become more categorical in their training," Spooner said. "What that means is that internships are more centered on a specialty. They are more specialized to a specific field in an earlier point. What that unfortunately did for our preparation for GMOs is they do not get a wide-variety of training and instead got more specialized training. STOMP was built in response to that."

The three-day course covers a wide variety of standardized patient and procedural skills in fields such as dermatology, ophthalmology, cardiology, orthopedics, psychiatry, and emergency medicine. Spooner believes their mission is to augment the skills that the GMOs already possess.

"I think it's important to understand that there are limitations to the course," Spooner said. "It is meant as an adjunct to some other level of training they have had. They have a certain skill set already. We are taking that and enhancing those skills and providing additional knowledge in certain areas that they haven't got exposure to."

Of the nearly 90 interns who NMCP graduates every year, about 50 to 55 are GMOs. The largest number of any internship program in the Navy, they go out to the fleet to practice medicine independently. So far, the total number to GMOs who have gone through the program since it has started is about 208 officers. Since the beginning, the HSBTC staff made changes until they found the format that worked the best and facilitated it. They also exported the program to other MTFs.

"We launched it in 2015, and we made additional changes until two years ago where we settled on the format that we are using today," Spooner said. "Also over the last two years, we have seen the program being exported and now it is being run in Walter Reed in Bethesda and in [Naval Medical Center] San Diego."

Lt. John Demis, a recent internship graduate who participated in STOMP, said he thought it was a well-organized course and a very important step between the internship and the fleet.

"It is an important reminder of what the expectations the Navy has for you as a doctor," Demis said. "You're expected to be an officer who's a doctor. We can subspecialize more and more, but the Navy has these bigger needs. I think it is an important part of the curriculum for interns when they finish their intern year and go out to the fleet to remind us that these are important skills to have and it prepares us for what's next."

With good feedback from the GMOs and the subject matter experts for each field, the future is bright for STOMP. Spooner continues to aim higher to reach his goal of giving the program a broader reach.

"I do think that this will become a Navy program or potentially a DHA program," Spooner said. "One of my goals for this is to make this a program that continues and sustains itself for years to come because I do feel like it's very important. This is one way of ensuring that a bridge of transmitting knowledge and expertise from the medical center out to the fleet. Critical to the future will be that we figure out how to make this sustainable."

As the U. S. Navy's oldest, continuously-operating hospital since 1830, Naval Medical Center Portsmouth proudly serves past and present military members and their families. The nationally acclaimed, state-of-the-art medical center, including its nine branch clinics located throughout the Hampton Roads area, additionally offers premier research and teaching programs designed to prepare new doctors, nurses and hospital corpsmen for future roles in healing and wellness.



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