Since the Vietnam era, aeromedical teams (air medevac) have delivered the highest degree of tactical care to wounded troops. Thousands of lives have been saved by the heroic efforts of flight medics, crew chiefs, and aviators. With US conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than 20000 aeromedical flights were conducted between 2007 and 2010 alone in support of combat operations. Among those flights, more than two-thirds were in support of pre-operative and postoperative resuscitation or surgery patients who had received care at a forward surgical team or combat support hospital. In this article, we give a brief overview of service-specific casualty transport and discuss the training of US Army critical care nurses before and during deployment to prepare them to serve as critical care transport personnel in a combat environment.

The various services in the US military differ distinctively in how they support en route critical care casualty evacuation and...

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