Korean nurses visit Hickam to exchange ideas

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Shane A. Cuomo
  • Air Force Print News
HICKAM AIR FORCE BASE, Hawaii (AFPN) --  Seven South Korean Air Force nurses spent a week on the island of Oahu learning how American civilian and military agencies respond to natural disaster contingencies.

The nurses, from the Korean Armed Forces Nursing Academy in Seoul, met with Hawaiian civilian and military civil defense and medical officials to exchange ideas about mass casualty response, civil-military coordination and biohazard response procedures.

“You have a really good system for disaster management,” said Maj. Soon-Young Lee, an adult nursing instructor at the academy. “We are trying to prepare a system in Korea so we want to start from here.”

South Korea’s National Institute for Disaster Prevention Civil Defense Training Program sponsored the visit April 22 to 30. The organization -- established in 1998 -- has a strategic training and development office in Honolulu that taps into Hawaii-based military and cultural expertise, institute officials said. Another aim is to facilitate the exchange of U.S. and South Korean civil defense practices.

This is the eighth year the Honolulu office has developed training for South Korean government officials. The nurses attended workshops at more than a dozen agencies on the island. The design of the workshops allows participants to share best practices in emergency medical response to pandemics and bioterrorism events and other civil-military coordination efforts.

The nurses visited the U.S. Pacific Air Force International Health Affairs office, Hickam’s William R. Schick Clinic, Tripler Army Medical Center and the Makalapa Naval Health Clinic at Pearl Harbor. They also attended seminars at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institute and School of Medicine and Public Health, the University of Hawaii's John A. Burns School of Medicine and the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies.

With disasters like the tsunami that devastated Indonesia and other Southeast Asia nations and the mudslide that hit the Philippines, this type of information-sharing is important, Air Force officials said. The exchanges ensure the best possible reactions to such emergency situations. 

The hope is that medical officials from both nations find new and better ways to manage disasters, they said.

At the Hickam clinic, chief nurse Lt. Col. David Beavers escorted his Korean counterparts.

“The visit with our colleagues from Korea was a wonderful experience,” he said. “They appreciated our hospitality and invited us to visit Korea. They were interested in our practice of nursing and preparation for natural disasters.”

It is this kind of positive exchange that program officials want to continue building. The hope is that the nurses will use the new ideas and friendships to strengthen their country’s disaster-management system.

Maj. Myoung Ran-Yu, chief of South Korea’s Military Nursing Research Center, said the visit has double benefits.

“We are here to share with U.S. experts,” she said, “and to also learn the systems and programs and apply them into our curriculums and our programs,” she said.