Interview: 21st century battlefield pain management

Colonel Chester 'Trip' Buckenmaier 3rd, MD, speaks to Dominic Chamberlain, Assistant Commissioning Editor: Colonel Buckenmaier is the current Director of the Defense and Veterans Center for Integrative Pain Management (MD, USA) and Fellowship Director of the Acute Pain Medicine and Regional Anesthesia program at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington DC (USA). He is an Associate Professor in Anesthesiology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda (MD, USA), and a Diplomat with the American Board of Anesthesiology. He attended Catawba College (NC, USA), on a Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) scholarship, graduating with a degree in Biology and Chemistry in 1986. He then attended East Carolina University in Greenville (NC, USA), receiving a Master in Science in Biology in 1988. In 1992, he graduated from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, completing his Anesthesia Residency at Walter Reed. In addition, he completed a 1-year Fellowship in Regional Anesthesia at Duke University (NC, USA) in 2002, resulting in the creation of the only Acute Pain Medicine Fellowship in the US military at Walter Reed (Washington, DC, USA). In September 2003, he deployed with the 21st Combat Support Hospital to Balad (Iraq), and demonstrated that the use of advanced regional anesthesia can be accomplished in a forward deployed environment. He performed the first successful continuous peripheral nerve block for pain management in a combat support hospital. In April 2009, he deployed to Camp Bastion (Afghanistan) with the British military and ran the first acute pain service in a theater of war. The Defense and Veterans Center for Integrative Pain Medicine (DVCIPM) is dedicated to improving pain management throughout the continuum of care for service personnel and their families.