U.S. Marine Corps: Corpsman Up! | 3rd MLG Corpsmen Sharpen Skills In Clinical Corpsmen Exchange Program

Press release from the U.S. Marine Corps:

August 12, 2021

Hospital Corpsman 1st Class Peter Wysocki gingerly rotates the patient’s leg and reiterates knowledge to his students. Effortlessly, without looking up, he fires a question at Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class Daniel Melendez pertaining to the care and treatment for hip injuries. Next, Hospitalman Tracy Shorter answers a question about stress fractures as Wysocki prepares to move on to the next lesson during another information-packed day of 3rd Marine Logistics Group’s Corpsman Clinical Exchange Program.

Wysocki, an independent duty corpsman, has dealt with treating a wide variety of illnesses and ailments in his 13 years in the U.S. Navy. From aboard the Harpers Ferry-class dock landing ship USS Oak Hill (LSD-51), and ashore at U.S. Naval Hospital Naples, Italy, to his present duty station with 9th Engineer Support Battalion, 3rd MLG, in Okinawa, Japan, he has independently provided care for patients plenty of times; a skillset he is now passing on to Melendez and Shorter.

The day to day tasks of a basic Navy Corpsman can range anywhere from conducting clerical duties to attaching to forward-deployed combat units. In many cases, corpsmen will take their patient into the care room, conduct vital checks, and discuss the patient’s symptoms with them. They will then take their assessment of the patient to a provider, also known as a medical officer. From that moment forward, decisions are in the hands of the provider to decide the treatment plan for the patient’s medical needs.

To improve medical care while underway, the Navy developed an additional schooling program to train experienced enlisted hospital corpsmen to learn and work as independent duty corpsmen, typically on smaller ships and submarines when medical officers are absent.

“This is how we are going to build the best corpsmen in the Marine Corps." U.S. Navy Capt. Andrew Lin, 3rd MLG surgeon

This press release was produced by the U.S. Marine Corps. The views expressed here are the author’s own.