Critical Care Air Transport Job Analysis for Current and Past Conflicts.

Area of Science:

• Military Medicine
• Aeromedical Evacuation
• Emergency Medical Services

Background:

• Critical Care Air Transport (CCAT) teams face challenges in large-scale combat operations (LSCO) with anticipated patient surges.
• A comprehensive job analysis of CCAT tasks and their criticality is lacking.
• This study aims to analyze CCAT operations to improve training and knowledge preservation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To conduct the first comprehensive job analysis of CCAT operations.
• To identify essential Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (KSAs) for CCAT personnel.
• To inform training, sustainment programs, and readiness assessments for CCAT teams.

Main Methods:

• Developed a task inventory of 140 CCAT tasks.
• Recruited 35 CCAT subject matter experts (SMEs) including physicians, nurses, and respiratory therapists.
• SMEs rated tasks on criticality and frequency; task importance was calculated.

Main Results:

• 27 SMEs completed surveys, representing extensive operational experience.
• Registered nurses had twice the number of Very Critical tasks compared to physicians and respiratory therapists.
• Four tasks were Very Important across all roles: equipment utilization, oxygen management, physiologic monitoring, and resuscitation.

Conclusions:

• This job analysis provides an evidence-based framework for CCAT training and readiness.
• The nursing workload bottleneck has implications for LSCO team composition and cross-training.
• Findings will guide KSAs, performance metrics, and training paradigms for austere environments.