673d MDSS hosts Commander Immersion

JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska – U.S. Air Force Col. Kirsten Aguilar, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson and 673d Air Base Wing commander, participated in an immersion tour with the 673d Medical Support Squadron at JBER, Alaska, June 11, 2021.

Visiting almost a dozen individual units during the immersion, Aguilar spent the day learning what day-to-day operations look like in the 673d MDSS, and how the Airmen of the squadron support mission readiness.

The 673d MDSS provides a variety of support operations to the 673 Medical Group, including personnel and administrative services, medical logistics, information systems, medical readiness, patient administration, nutritional medicine, pharmacy and laboratory services, among others.

Each stop on the immersion tour Airmen briefed Aguilar on the different duties the unit performs, and many had hands-on activities to demonstrate what kind of tasks the unit might tackle during an average working day.

Some of the duties included clearing and destroying a hard drive containing personally identifiable information at information services, mixing medicine with saline for intravenous application at the pharmacy, and testing blood samples at the laboratory.

One of the more unique tasks was the application of moulage, the use of special effects makeup to recreate realistic injuries. Under guidance from Darren Vandeursen, a 673d Medical Group education and training contractor, Aguilar used stage blood and other makeup to craft a fake wound onto Vandeursen’s hand. Moulage is often used for training in the 673d Medical Group, as well as in larger exercises to simulate realistic combat injuries.

At another stop, U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Kevin Phone, a 673d Medical Support Squadron section chief and part of the Hospital Facility Management team, gave a tour of the hospital’s interstitial spaces- three full floors of the hospital where important infrastructure is housed.

“Ventilation ductworks, electrical conduits, and communication cables are in the interstitial spaces, so the health care space below is unobstructed and easier to be reconfigured,” explained Phone. “The maintenance technicians can come up to the interstitial spaces and perform maintenance without having a lot of interruptions to health care operations.”

Aguilar also met with junior enlisted of the 673d MDSS during a planned lunch. While fielding questions from the group and sharing her perspectives as commander, Aguilar emphasized the importance of the 673d MDSS and the role they play on JBER.

“I personally appreciated that our Airmen got a chance to illustrate what they do and how it impacts the mission,” said Captain Miguel De Castro Pretelt, the 673d MDSS resource management office flight commander, who helped organize the immersion tour. “The biggest benefit I see is the ability to demonstrate all of the support our squadron provides and how multi-disciplinary it is.”