379th AEW MFST team ready to project medical support downrange Published Dec. 14, 2012 By Senior Airman Joel Mease 379th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs SOUTHWEST ASIA -- Their motto is, "We cut, you live." They are light, lean and life-saving. The 379th Expeditionary Medical Group Multiple Field Surgical Team, a small and intensely trained team of combat medics, is ready at a moment's notice to save lives across the Central Command's area of responsibility. The Multiple Field Surgical Team (known as "M-Fast") is a mobile surgical team, which can be relocated anywhere in the Persian Gulf or Horn of Africa where surgical services can be non-existent. "We are designed and trained to move out quickly. Within a few hours of getting the distress call, we can be packed, loaded and flown to wherever surgical capability is needed, " said Lt. Col. Jacob Oldham, 379th EMDG MFST chief. "We save and stabilize the patient so that they can be evacuated to a higher level of care." Because the team must have the capability of being called to duty at a moment's notice, flexibility is key to the unit's success. "If we know we will have to go in very light, we can literally care all the gear needed in an operating room in backpacks. If we are needed to remain in place longer or perform multiple surgeries, we can still fit all the gear and supplies we need into a backpacks and one cargo pallet," Oldham said. "This scalable footprint makes us very mobile." The team owes its ease of mobility to its small size, just six people, and to its advanced, lightweight-medical equipment. Most of their gear is not something one would find in a normal operating room. "We carry smaller, ruggedized, surgical equipment that can be packed and moved quickly," Oldham said. "This light and lean design makes it possible for us to move out quickly and be transported by almost any mobility aircraft." However, practice is the only way the MFST unit can be prepared to forward deploy at a moments notice. "They recently spent a day with (Special Operations Command Central) soldiers getting familiar with new gear ensembles as they practiced an emergency response on mock patients," Col. James Clapsaddle, 379th EMDG commander. "Earlier exercises placed the team out to sea on Navy ships and conducting joint training with nearby allied nations." Their unique mission can place them anywhere from a forward operating location to being on board a naval ship. Once on the ground the team can set up an operating room within an hour and handle critical care for 20 non-surgical patients or provide life and limb-saving surgery to 10 patients. "We never know when the call will go out for our services, but when it happens, we will be ready," Oldham said. Another benefit of having the MFST unit stationed at the 379th AEW, is that it gives the 379th EMDG just one more tool in their tool box they wouldn't have had before. "The surgical staff on the MFST are our only local surgeons," Oldham said. "Bases and (forward operating locations) from all over the (area of responsibility) send their people to us for surgeries. If it were not for AFCENT prepositioning the MFST here, we would not have surgeons here to perform the much-needed mission." While the team hopes it is never called to duty, saving lives is what they have been called to do. "The MFST teams are like our defenders, firefighters or ambulance crews; they are highly trained, they are ready, they are eager for action, but you hope you never need them," Clapsaddle said. "The bad news is if we ever need to activate the MFST, someone in the AOR is in a life-or-death situation. The good news is, if the MFST gets there in time, he or she will make it home."