Some lessons in military medicine can only be learned from the litter. For Green Beret combat medic Luke Sciulli, that lesson arrived when a booby-trapped building in Helmand Province collapsed on him and turned the medic into the patient. What followed reshaped how he thinks about casualty care, recovery, and the future of battlefield medicine. The Day Everything Changed On January 18, 2018, Sciulli was running a personnel-recovery operation out of a Taliban-controlled priso

A career in military medicine can offer purpose, leadership, and clinical breadth that civilian paths rarely match — but the route in is poorly understood. In this WarDocs episode, COL Danielle Holt, MD, Associate Dean of Admissions and Recruitment at the USU School of Medicine, opens the door. A Career Built Across Two Identities Holt’s path runs from ROTC and a general surgery residency at Tripler Army Medical Center to duty stations as different as rural Fort Wainwright, A

Some careers follow a map. CAPT (Ret) Kimberly Elenberg's followed her curiosity, and it carried her from a hospital ward at Walter Reed to the front lines of autonomous battlefield medicine. In this WarDocs episode, she shares how a 28-year journey across the Army, the US Public Health Service, and academia was built one relationship and one bold leap at a time. It Started With a Building in Philadelphia Elenberg's military career began with a glimpse of ROTC cadets rappelli

Navigating the Shift to Large Scale Combat Operations The transition from counterinsurgency operations to Large Scale Combat Operations (LSCO) represents a fundamental shift in how the Army prepares for conflict. In past environments, the "Golden Hour" for evacuation was often a standard expectation. However, in an LSCO environment, resources will be constrained, and communication may be limited by electromagnetic interference. We must now prepare for prolonged field care sce

Most military trauma surgeons did not begin their careers loading jet fuel on a flight line. Col Valerie Sams, MD did. That unconventional path, from Air Force line officer in logistics and fuels to trauma czar at the Bagram role three and now Director of C-STARS Cincinnati, has shaped one of the most clear-eyed voices in military medicine on what it takes to lead, train, and equip the force for the next fight. In this episode of WarDocs — The Military Medicine Podcast, sh

When NASA needed someone to help solve the problem of keeping astronauts alive during a three-year mission to Mars, they called a retired Marine Colonel who had already flown four Space Shuttle missions, completed a dual residency in internal medicine and pediatrics, run an Ebola treatment unit in Liberia, and cared for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. In a conversation recorded from Sydney, Australia, Dr. David Hilmers joined WarDocs to lay out a blueprint for military medic