Exercise Wounded Wallaby provided 24 surgeons an opportunity to practise complex military trauma procedures in a realistic training environment, with injuries simulating those that could be suffered on the battlefield.

Director of Clinical Services and chair of the exercise, Colonel Julian Williams, of 2nd Health Brigade, said it was the largest collection of Army surgeons in a generation. 

“The resources and priority assigned to this event recognise both the critical role our surgeons play in the delivery of deployed health support, and the requirement for us to be prepared to deliver this health support tonight – there is no lead time any more. This must be our mindset,” Colonel Williams said.

At Macquarie University’s state-of-the-art surgical skills and anatomy facility, participants were given access to the cadaver lab to practise skills on the type of injuries they may have to treat on operations.

Deputy Commander 2nd Health Brigade Colonel Keith Towsey said it was a welcome chance for the brigade’s surgeons to get to grips with the kind of hands-on training they may not have had for years.

“All of us have worked with cadavers ever since medical school, and they provide very realistic training in anatomy without the anxiety of working on live patients,” Colonel Towsey said.

“This also gives surgeons the opportunity to reacquaint themselves with surgical approaches they’d otherwise rarely use unless deployed in a combat environment, and this helps better prepare them for potentially treating wounded soldiers on deployment.

“It was enlightening to see our specialists achieve consensus on a raft of issues which have plagued surgical capability across the ADF over the past decade – determining how we prepare surgeons for combat trauma care, what competencies are needed for this and how we can achieve these competencies, including timeframes and resourcing.”

'Very few of us have experienced combat trauma – I’m one of the few – and it’s hard to prepare for this without experiencing it first-hand.'

Major Tom Patterson, a trauma and general surgeon at Headquarters 2nd Health Brigade and the driving force behind the event, said the training equipped Army surgeons with the military-specific tools they simply couldn’t practise in the civilian world.

“The types of procedures that are required for war surgery are not required very often in civilian surgical practice and that is why it’s important to complete activities like this to maintain skills in certain procedures,” Major Patterson said.

Colonel Towsey, a burns and general surgery specialist in his civilian career, said the training was important at a time when actual operational experience was significantly less common than it would have been 10 or 20 years ago.

“Very few of us have experienced combat trauma – I’m one of the few – and it’s hard to prepare for this without experiencing it first-hand,” he said. 

“However, the lab allows surgeons to get familiar with trauma techniques and approaches they otherwise wouldn’t get a chance to practise anywhere else, so when they’re required to operate on real patients, they have the skills they need.”