Page 10 - Journal of Special Operations Medicine - Fall 2016

from the

SOMA PRESIDENT

Dear SOMA professionals, friends, burden on the medical side to help the
family, and volunteers: line side to either mitigate or assume
the risk to mission. The burden is eased
ere’s hoping that this note finds you by three things: competence, capability,
Hall healthy and happy at heart. and capacity.
Steven Viola
In an ongoing effort to help close the SOCM, ATP, NREMT-P Competence: Strive to become funda-
communication gap in terms of needs mentality perfect in your task and pur-
between the line side and the medical branch, and to pose, and having the ability to self-correct.
better “flatten the comms” between them, I offer a few Capability: Learn something new every day as a
ideas that may help.
trainer of your personnel or by being trained by
someone. Be teachable.
We have been in the “conflict resolution” business for
the past 16 years, in both high- and low-intensity areas Capacity: Love change and manage it. Read the ter-
of declared armed conflict and a few places in between, rain and respond accordingly. Don’t be a 60-watt
as well as here in the homeland. We have Servicemem- bulb in a 100-watt outlet.
bers who have been in the conflict resolution business
for almost their entire career. SOMA is taking the long Special Operations personnel are a diverse group of rock
view in addressing how we deal with that legacy of war stars in their own right. They are often times unheralded
on Servicemembers’ physical, emotional, and spiritual rock stars; nonetheless, they are doing things that are re-
health, as well as their sustainability while they are in markable. One of the initiatives to address the needs of
the Armed Services and life beyond the service. this group is the development of the Preservation of the
Force and Family (POTFF). This is US Special Opera-
So what is the mentality of the healthcare providers in tions Command’s direct effort to ensure the sustainabil-
Special Operations? What makes Special Operations ity of the warfighter physically, mentally, and spiritually.
medicine special? And how do we make the impossible
possible? Physical: The tactical athlete program preps the
warfighter from workout to recovery to nutrition.
First, I would offer that anyone in this organization loves Mental (emotional): POTFF helps Special Oper ations
a challenge—and I mean really loves a challenge. We personnel deal with significant emotional events and
are excellent at listening, learning, and adapting, while the aftermath of armed conflict, addressing how to
recognizing along the way that just because “that’s the manage those events. POTFF helps family members
way we have always done it” doesn’t mean there isn’t deal with the separation from the warfighter.
a better way to do it. To meet those challenges, we are
masters at balancing the two constants that are present Figure 1 Managing Complex Change.
in every part of a training cycle and real-world employ-
ment: risk and burden. Risk to the mission, Servicemem-
ber, equipment, and material, and the burden to ensure
the proper selection and training, and that we are stay-
ing current on the latest techniques and procedures for
the real-world scenarios we may encounter. Simply put,
managing change by recognizing that approach can pre-
dict outcome (Figure 1).

To put the relationship between risk and burden in sim-
pler terms: when there is risk to the line side, there is a

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