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Practicum Phase

The practicum year will be composed of clinical and other rotations to provide the necessary training opportunities covering the entire spectrum of aerospace medicine.  These rotations will occupy a 12 month period, and will prepare the resident through supervised clinical, project and program management experiences to be competent in all aspects of aerospace medicine as well as a familiarity with the other specialties of preventive medicine.

Practicum Opportunities:

• Federal Aviation Administration- Aviation Medical Examiner Course
• UTMB Aviation Medicine- Aviation Medicine Center
• United Space Alliance Flight Operations Training Academy Part 1/Part 2
• Brooks Air Force Base- Primary Course
• NASA- Johnson Space Center
• United States Coast Guard
• NASA- Kennedy Space Center

  

• National Transportation Safety Board                                           
• Garrett Flying Services
• Delta Airlines
• United Airlines

Aerospace Medicine Activities:

• Parachute training
• Roll-A-Resident- aerobatic flight orientation
• Coast Guard S&R Underwater Egress Training
• Global Surviving Training Course
• Submit- Your the Flight Surgeon or Cases from the Residents Teaching File, ASEM
• Continental Airlines Cockpit "Jumpseat" observation, domestic and international flights
• Motorsport medicine (NASCAR) EMS familiarization
• KSC Lauch Orientation
• EAA Air Venture, Oshkosh
• Herman Life Flight
• Flight training

• Aerospace Medical Association (AsMA) annual scientific meeting
• Patricia Hilliard-Robertson Symposium
• Pushing the Envelope

The Resident will Conduct research into:

• Clinical problems of aerospace medicine

• Physiologic and psychologic problems related to long-duration spaceflight

• Longitudinal studies of flight and support personnel to evaluate long-term health consequences of exposure to unusual environments

• Preventive medicine programs to reduce personal health risks and to increase the safety of the work-place environment

• Outcomes research

• Develop information management systems to support the delivery and evaluation of population based health care systems

Residents will be given training opportunities that expose each resident to the varied practice opportunities and challenges of aerospace medicine. Training rotations will be provided in civil aviation that will give direct experience in performing clinical exams on pilots, cover aeromedical aspects of general and commercial aviation, and instruct and provide a working knowledge of the aeromedical standards of the Federal Aviation Administration and Special Issuance procedures. Residents will gain experience in performing aeromedical case summaries for the Aviation Medical Center at UTMB and the Aerospace Medicine Board at NASA. Other areas of instruction will include medical standards for safety sensitive workers, occupational clinical care, regulatory programs such as drug and alcohol testing, and environmental health and safety. These training opportunities would qualify the resident to practice aerospace medicine for the FAA or for commercial or corporate airlines.

Additional training opportunities will instruct the residents in the unique hazards of flight in military aviation and include aeromedical examinations and standards, longitudinal studies of cohorts of crewmembers to develop waiver processes, biomedical protective equipment in environments of reduced pressure, radiation, and acceleration forces, and training and monitoring techniques for human testing in hazardous environments.

The residents will also receive training rotations in space medicine applications. Instruction will be received in the clinical aspects of space flight including aeromedical standards and certification, biomedical protective equipment, protection from extreme environments including low pressure, high levels of radiation and acceleration, and reduced gravitational forces (microgravity). The resident will be proficient in basic knowledge and ability to access the literature related to the adverse changes in physiology that occur with prolonged exposure to microgravity and current research into the underlying mechanisms for the observed changes.

Residents are not specifically provided flight training to become pilots in the program. If residents are not pilots, ground school and flight training are available and encouraged at Ellington Field and Houston Gulf Airport in Houston and Scholes Field in Galveston.