ST. JOSEPH, Mo. -- The 139th Airlift Wing and Mosaic Life Care signed a training agreement on October 2, 2023 at Mosaic Life Care in St. Joseph, Missouri. The agreement will provide medical Airmen with another opportunity to maintain their clinical requirements as medics.
“We have this great resource in our backyard, in St. Joseph, with Mosaic,” said Lt. Col. Joe Lembke, medical plans officer assigned to Detachment 1, 139th Medical Group. “We’re medical professionals, they’re medical professionals, so they extended the invitation to us to come into their teaching hospital and enhance our clinical skills for our medics.”
Per Air Force requirements, each medic needs 40 clinical hours every two years. Medics from the 139th will be present at Mosaic for clinical and trauma training experience on a rotating basis every drill weekend.
“Just by having some of the Missouri Air National Guard medics there, I think will be a big message, or kind of a walking billboard,” said Lembke.
Medics from the 139th will be in Operational Camouflage Pattern (OCP) scrubs which will stand out in the hospital setting.
In the Air National Guard most Airmen are citizen Airmen, meaning they have a civilian occupation as well as a military occupation.
“Whether they’re an accountant or some other profession, as an Air Force medic, they are expected to perform at a proficiency rate,” said Lembke. “This will help bridge that gap of training to enhance our medical skills and their proficiency in providing care.”
This new training agreement is a benefit for the team at Mosaic as well because it provides their nurses with new knowledge and experiences they might not encounter otherwise.
“For the Air Force medics, they’re going to get their training, their proficiency skills, and the amount of hours that are required to be in a clinical setting…and then in return, it’s all about knowledge sharing,” said Lembke.
The 139th Airlift Wing hosts the Sound of Speed Airshow every other year. Nurses from Mosaic help aid in medical care throughout the airshow due to the abundance of guests. This training agreement will assist both the nurses and medics in generating a seamless combined effort throughout future airshows.
The community reach this agreement creates extends further than the city of St. Joseph and its inhabitants.
For their civilian occupation, some of the medics, nurses and nurse practitioners from the 139th work for Mosaic. This includes Mosaic’s other location, Maryville.
“That only helps strengthen that bond and the networking that we need to get in there,” said Lembke.
Many of the nurses at Mosaic attended, or are attending, Missouri Western State University similarly to many of the medics at the 139th. The wing has an extensive history of community involvement with the university.
“A lot of our medics are nursing students at Missouri Western, so again, another resource in our community that we’re utilizing to build partnerships,” said Lembke.
While community engagement, training hours and increased connections are benefits both Mosaic and the 139th will receive through this training agreement, the biggest benefit Airmen will receive is applying their skills and training in real-world scenarios with real patients.
“This is going to help because we don’t do patient care on [drill] weekends and a mannequin can only take you so far. We have good mannequins and simulation labs, but there’s nothing like truly working in a hospital to build those skills,” said Lembke.
Some medical Airmen from the wing are assigned to Detachment 1 of the 139th Medical Group, which is part of the Missouri National Guard Homeland Response Force (HRF). The HRF responds to natural, man-made, or terrorist-initiated disasters, attacks and additional hazards throughout FEMA region 7. Region 7 includes Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska.
“We’ll use the clinical competence skills that Mosaic is going to allow us to learn, and take those skills to a natural disaster or some type of Chemical, Biological, Radiological or Nuclear (CBRN) attack,” said Lembke. “That’s the big picture: honing in on our medic skills and [taking] care of patients in a deployment, or wherever we may be.”
The 139th Medical Group currently has a training agreement with the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, Kansas. The training agreement with Mosaic broadens the opportunity for medical Airmen to maintain their currencies.