Modern warfare has demanded a different kind of approach to combat readiness. Modeling and simulation have successfully reduced instructional resources, increased training and retention quality, and have allowed non-lethal experience for combat conditions and mitigated the environmental impact of live training exercises. It makes absolute sense in a time of diminishing controlled clinical exposure to combat medicine conditions that this successful application of modeling and simulation be applied to the field of combat medicine. Simulation applied to medicine should yield the same results and advantages that come from warfighting, aviation, or other military simulations, and should follow the same requirements and principles.

Under the U.S. Army's Combat Trauma Patient Simulation Program (CTPS), managed by Simulation Training and Instrumentation Command (STRICOM), and sponsored by Medical Research and Material Command (MRMC), a series of user based simulation assessments were conducted to facilitate the creation of a military medical simulation system. The user assessment methodology was not meant to produce an independent test to measure definitive first order principles. It was more correctly an attempt to survey a variety of military medical users as to their perceptions of the efficacy of using simulation within their educational domain for further development and research. The user assessments were conducted over a period of two and a half years, and are continuing as part of the CTPS program. They were conducted in the broadest range possible, in all areas of medical education and with as many domain experts as possible. Some of the assessments were directly related to CTPS and included use of existing CTPS hardware, particularly the Human Patient Simulator. While the CTPS chosen simulator was used, assessments were made of other types of training aids, devices, and patient simulators as well.

This paper describes the results of those experiments.