Needs assessment for a new military burn care educational curriculum focused on prolonged field care: The Burns for Providers Program (BP2)

Abstract We performed a needs assessment to determine the essential elements for a curriculum teaching burn care during Large Scale Combat Operations against peer/near-peer adversaries within multi-domain contested combat environments. Virtual and face-to-face site visit meetings were conducted with 20 stakeholders at 3 levels: (1) Subject Matter Experts in military burn casualty care at the US Army Institute of Surgical Research (USAISR), the Joint Trauma System, and the US Army Medical Center of Excellence (US Army MedCOE) in Joint Base San Antonio (JBSA) – Fort Sam Houston, TX; (2) Course Directors, Instructors, Curriculum Innovators, and Writers for the Combat Paramedic Branch and the Critical Care Flight Paramedic Program at JBSA; and (3) regulatory administrators providing education, research, and Institutional Review Board (IRB) administration for USAISR and US Army MedCOE. The identified terminal learning objectives (TLOs) consisted of training in burn casualty monitoring and principles of burn wound care according to available resources; best practices during prolonged casualty care for pain, nutrition, and infection control; specific management of inhalation, chemical, radiation, electrical, pediatric, and mass casualty burn injuries; and procedural skill training for patient decontamination, debridement, dressings, and escharotomy. Additionally, needs were identified for novel technology that provides asynchronous individual learning opportunities using interactive role-play simulations, immersive simulation, or virtual reality simulation as well as hands-on procedure simulators. Stakeholder engagement resulted in the identification of 16 TLOs that were subsequently used as the basis for a military curriculum we are calling the “Burns for Providers Program” (BP2).