Writing the Textbook featuring former 68W series instructor Mike Davis
Article written by Pulse of Army Medicine staff
Article published on: October 1, 2024 in the Pulse of Army Medicine 2024 Edition
Read Time: < 2 mins
Figure 2-5: Air Ambulance zones of evacuation.
Mike Davis has a long history of service to his country. That includes a background as an agent in the Department of Homeland Security, and then as an instructor who found himself with a daunting task… writing the 68W textbook with the Borden Institute.
From his previous experience, Davis saw a knowledge gap between techniques in the field and those being taught in the schoolhouse. He started out bridging that shortcoming as he began teaching the 68W course as an instructor.
“When I graduated AIT in 1991, no one was teaching the process of the creation of a combat casualty collection point. So, one of the first things I did was implement a class that established hasty and deliberate casualty collection points into the curriculum,’ said Davis.
“...when you finally get a chapter completed, it gave the feeling of a great accomplishment.”
Seeing that early success in improving training gave a sense of efficacy in fixing those knowledge gaps. Davis knew he needed to find a way to bring new techniques being taught at the 68W course and getting those improvements to the Soldiers working in the field. With that in mind, he realized that problem could be mitigated by creating a textbook. Davis also realized the instrument to create the textbook currently existed within the Medical Center of Excellence, the Borden Institute.
“We found that when we improved the curriculum, and then we could put that advance in the queue to get it into the next textbook being built inhouse with the Borden Institute,” said Davis.
Davis acted on the idea and got approvals from his chain of command to pursue it. This led to the first series of 68W textbooks published by the Borden Institute. Davis says the process was slow at the start as the realities of textbook publishing started to show itself with the first edits coming back to the instructors.
“It was painful,” said Davis “working on the project was overwhelming, but when you finally get a chapter completed, it gave the feeling of a great accomplishment.”
Davis’s dream is now manifest in the new series of 68W textbooks which can be downloaded and into the hands of Soldiers in the field as a digital copy. The completed 68W series textbooks are to Common Access Card holders at https://medcoe.army.mil/borden.