Medical officers in the US Department of Defense are required to develop facility with Health Service Support (HSS) doctrine and medical planning for military operations. JP 4-02 Health Service Support provides basic doctrine and guidance for HSS planning and traditional military education in this arena has done a fairly good job of providing the basic knowledge outlined in this and other relevant publications through traditional lecture format. Lecture based methods do not, however, do an adequate job of teaching the thought process involved in regulating and moving casualties on the battlefield. Courses often include complex medical planning exercises which help students apply this knowledge to realistic scenarios that replicate expected planning considerations in actual operations. These exercises usually, however, are time consuming and suffer from complexity which often interferes with student learning and still fail to impart the understanding of changing dynamics with patient movement and placement on the battlefield.

The USU Combat Health Support Board Game is a low-cost table-top exercise (board game) that teaches real-time decision making in a medical regulating simulation of the battlefield. Students are required to process randomly generated casualties through a representative Combat Health Support structure including fixed medical facilities and patient movement assets as they apply the tenets of HSS and other critical learning objectives in this interactive game. This paper will describe in detail the methodology, lessons learned, and initial outcomes assessment of USU Combat Health Support Board Game for military medical student education at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. This methodology has applicability across the full spectrum of military, governmental, and civil organizations for training and preparation for medical and logistics disciplines and is feasible approach to effective training in today's cost-constrained training environment.