Navy Medicine Still Facing Challenges

[unhappycamper]

Navy Medicine Still Facing Challenges
Military.com | By Bryant Jordan | December 07, 2007

While the Navy is facing challenges in recruiting and retaining doctors and other medical personnel, it has no problem meeting medical demands in the Central Command theater, where it treats the wounded, injured and sick coming out of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, says the Navy's top doctor.

Instead, Vice Adm. Adam Robinson Jr., chief of the Navy Medical Corps, said in a telephone interview Dec. 6, the challenge in theater is to identify service members who may be dealing with combat stress.

"I don't have any gaps in which I can't treat service men and women coming back from theater, for whatever they may have," he said during a Bloggers Roundtable via telecon. "Some of the challenges is to make sure that we screen these men and women appropriately ."

This, he said, would provide the Navy with a basic health information on service members, including those who may suffer mental problems after leaving the AOR, he said.

"So we have a baseline and some data to make sure that if they're suffering from combat stress of any sort, we can identify that," Robinson said, "or at least have a baseline for where they were when they came out of theater, and to make sure we can get them to the care they need in case this becomes a problem in the future."


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,157690,00.html?wh=wh