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380AEW Article

Med Group keeps 380th AEW healthy

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Timothy Boyer
  • 380 Air Expeditionary Wing
Undisclosed location Southwest Asia --  The 380th Expeditionary Medical Group is the smallest group on base, but their impact on the mission is undeniable.

"Our job is to keep the service members here healthy so they can continue to perform their respective parts of the mission," said Capt. Nathan Goeke, 380 EMDG physician assistant who is deployed here from Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.

The spectrum of services available from "med group" is impressive.

"There are a lot of different pieces," explained Senior Airmen Dino Beharic, 380 EMDG unit deployment manager also deployed from Nellis AFB, Nev. "We have a great admin section, the main clinic downstairs and the dental and mental health clinics upstairs along with the preventative medicine team, a fleet of flight surgeons and our Army medics. We enable airpower."

With the whole med group being smaller than many flights, it may be surprising to learn of the many ways they keep the wing healthy.

"Most of our mission is unseen," Goeke, a Williamsburg, Iowa, native said. "We review food supplies, monitor life-support systems, safeguard the environment and review procedures to reduce injuries. We complete our mission daily to prepare and safeguard the base for tomorrow."

The group has the capabilities to take care of most common ailments and injuries, to include X-rays, most dental work and treatment of many sicknesses.

"We provide most capabilities that you would find at your home station clinic," Beharic, a native of Aurora, Colo., who originally hails from Bosnia and Herzegovina. "If we do not have the resources to provide the needed care, we have other options."

"We routinely use support services such as aeromedical evacuations to move patients to locations that have the appropriate capabilities to provide the needed patient care," added Goeke.

In addition to the doctors and medical technicians, there are Airmen who maintain the equipment, a pharmacy technician preparing medication and more whose contributions keep every facet of the base healthy.

"Public health is an organization which works to ensure the food preparation and presentation maintain standards and avoid contamination or illness," Goeke said. "Bioenvironmental safeguards the water, soil, noise pollution and heat dangers while the physiologist supports airfield operations in life-support systems. There are so many different components here, but they all work together to make a highly compact force of health support."

Without the med group, there would be no patient care, quality of life would go down as standards would not be met, and "there would be a lot of tan medics at the pool," Beharic joked.

"How would our service members and civilians here feel if the water they use to shower or the food they eat was not being monitored?" Goeke asked.

The clinic is available to service members on a walk-in basis, but the hope is that with the preventative measures the 380 EMDG takes, that service will not be necessary for most.

"You know the medical group is executing its mission when you don't need the clinic," Goeke said. "But if something does happen, we'll quickly have you at ease and taken care of with our professionalism and experience."