The Ties That Bind: Camaraderie in Military Interprofessional Healthcare Teams

ABSTRACT Introduction Multiple aspects of interpersonal dynamics can help or hinder the success of teams, particularly those in a Military Interprofessional Healthcare Team (MIHT). One specific mechanism for MIHTs’ success is camaraderie and how these military teams are able to achieve, maintain, and enable the development of this important characteristic. Despite our understanding of military service members as being bonded like a family, we have a limited understanding of how this bond is translated into their MIHT experiences. Materials and Methods This study conducted interviews among 30 individuals who had participated in, led individual, and/or led many MIHTs, using a grounded theory methodology. Participants represented 11 different health professions, including officers and enlisted military members, and three branches of the U.S. military (e.g., army, navy, and air force). Data were collected and analyzed in iterative cycles until saturation was achieved. Results We identified six themes that shaped the overarching concept of camaraderie in MIHTs. These themes were (1) confidence in competent peers, (2) shared goals, (3) mutual respect, (4) desire to help one another improve, (5) personal is professional, and (6) bonds of military service. This paper describes each of these themes, provides illustrative examples from the data, and describes how these components contribute to MIHTs’ team dynamics. We present a model for how to understand these themes. Conclusions Through the identification and exploration of these aspects of camaraderie, we are able to better understand how MIHTs are able to be successful. MIHTs that demonstrated confidence in their brother/sister in arms possessed shared goals and missions, while maintaining mutual respect, a desire to help one another do better, and creating a personal and professional overlap tended to form stronger bonds of military service. Critically, these six aspects support a more nuanced understanding of the spirit of camaraderie and how it underpins MIHT success.

New Insights About Military Interprofessional Healthcare Teams: Lessons Learned and New Directions From a Program of Research

ABSTRACT The success of the military is significantly supported by highly effective collaborative teams. While much is known about successful military teams outside the context of healthcare delivery, considerably less attention has been paid to teams working in patient care. Thus, this supplement has explored the features of successful military interprofessional healthcare teams (MIHTs). In this summary paper, the authors discuss what this supplement’s investigations have taught us about MIHTs and offer a series of proposed future investigations of MIHTs and their role in military healthcare.

Design of Miniaturized Sensors for a Mission-Oriented UAV Application: A New Pathway for Early Warning

In recent decades, the increasing threats associated with Chemical and Radiological (CR) agents prompted the development of new tools to detect and collect samples without putting in danger first responders inside contaminated areas. A particularly promising branch of these technological developments relates to the integration of different detectors and sampling systems with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). The adoption of this equipment may bring significant benefits for both military and civilian implementations. For instance, instrumented UAVs could be used in support of specialist military teams such as Sampling and Identification of Biological, Chemical and Radiological Agents (SIBCRA) team, tasked to perform sampling in contaminated areas, detecting the presence of CR substances in field and then confirming, collecting and evaluating the effective threats. Furthermore, instrumented UAVs may find dual-use application in the civil world in support of emergency teams during industrial accidents and in the monitoring activities of critical infrastructures. Small size drones equipped with different instruments for detection and collection of samples may enable, indeed, several applications, becoming a tool versatile and easy to use in different fields, and even featuring equipment normally utilized in manual operation. The authors hereby present the design of miniaturized sensors for a mission-oriented UAV application and the preliminary results from an experimental campaign performed in 2020.

Modeling the Feedback Process in Teams: A Field Study of Teamwork

Research on teamwork has considered the effects of different types of feedback and information exchanged as teams coordinate their actions and has described team processes in terms of phases of task performance. Interpersonal communication processes represent the behavioral mechanism by which teams create shared mental models, but it is not clear how teams use and exchange feedback as part of these processes as they perform together. Using a 5-year-period, grounded theory methodology, we investigated how action teams exchange feedback to achieve teamwork. We examined the feedback process of three different elite French military teams. Our findings offer new evidence that action teams working in extreme/high stakes contexts use different types of feedback from multiple sources and that certain feedback sources are more relevant and certain feedback practices are more prevalent at certain stages. Specifically, throughout briefing, team task performance, formal debriefing, and informal debriefing stages, the teams we studied used information from multiple sources as they engaged in technique, reflexive, and socialization feedback practices. Teamwork was evident as the teams coordinated their action during recurring performance cycles. We use our findings to model the feedback process for teamwork and discuss implications for research and practice.

Specifics of the First General Population Census of 1897 in Menzelinsk District of Ufa Province

The study of the First general population census in October 1896 – January 1897 years in Menzelinsk District of Ufa Province – “in the inner outskirts” – is relevant in several aspects: 1) it allows considering the effectiveness of the instructions for organizing and conducting statistical operations developed by the Chief Census Commission, which were compiled with the focus on the Russian majority of the country; 2) there is an opportunity to observe the social behavior of local authorities, facing the need to organize and conduct a statistical event within a very short time; 3) can trace the reaction of the local population to this state statistical event. The reports and journals of the provincial and district census commissions preserved in the fund of the Central Statistical Committee at the Ministry of Internal Affairs served as the source of the given article. The publication highlights a number of omissions allowed by the center in preparation of the normative legal documentation of the census; it also discusses the formation of census and enumeration areas in the country, recruiting of census enumerators and translators, providers the confessional composition of the heads of census areas and clarifies the role of the county census commission and mullahs in conducting explanatory work among Muslims, the protest reasons and forms are specified and the course of the census with the involvement of military teams in Muslim settlements is presented in details.

Can machine learning be used to forecast the future uncertainty of military teams?

Uncertainty is a fundamental property of neural computation that becomes amplified when sensory information does not match a person’s expectations of the world. Uncertainty and hesitation are often early indicators of potential disruption, and the ability to rapidly measure uncertainty would have implications for future educational and training efforts by targeting reflective discussions about past actions, supporting in-progress corrections, and generating forecasts about future disruptions. An approach is described combining neurodynamics and machine learning to provide quantitative measures of uncertainty. Models of neurodynamic information derived from electroencephalogram (EEG) brainwaves have provided detailed neurodynamic histories of US Navy submarine navigation team members. Persistent periods (25–30 s) of neurodynamic information were seen as discrete peaks when establishing the submarine’s position and were identified as periods of uncertainty by an artificial intelligence (AI) system previously trained to recognize the frequency, magnitude, and duration of different patterns of uncertainty in healthcare and student teams. Transition matrices of neural network states closely predicted the future uncertainty of the navigation team during the three minutes prior to a grounding event. These studies suggest that the dynamics of uncertainty may have common characteristics across teams and tasks and that forecasts of their short-term evolution can be estimated.

The benefits of joining forces

Sam Foster, Chief Nurse, Oxford University Hospitals, considers the benefits of having military teams to assist and bring a fresh perspective to NHS Trusts during the pandemic

Legal Policy of Anti-Soviet Governments in the Tax Sphere During the Russian Civil War

Introduction: there have been written numerous works about the White movement, but the problems of state regulation of taxes remain unexplored in the historical and legal science.Purpose: this paper aims to study the main directions in the legal policy of anti-Soviet governments in the tax sphere and to determine its impact on the viability of state entities of ‘White’ Russia.Methods: dialectical, formal-logical, functional, and other general scientific research methods; special legal methods: comparative legal and formal legal.Results: we have examined the organization of the tax service, the problems of taxation and collection of taxes and fees; identified the main reasons for the failure of the legal policy of the White governments in this sphere; formulated conclusions about the impossibility of a radical change in tax legislation in the context of the civil war. Conclusions: tax legislation of the White governments was based on the laws of the former Russian Empire and the Provisional Government, with some adjustments being made in accordance with the conditions of the time. The pre-revolutionary tax apparatus was used to collect tax revenues without major changes in its structure. The rising inflation forced the legislators to increase the tax rates, introduce new sources of taxation, and revise tax benefits, with the main focus on the collection of indirect taxes. Since it was impossible to implement fundamental reform of the tax system, there were only made minor changes resulting in the convergence of direct taxes and property taxation. However, the tax authorities turned out to be unable to calculate and assign direct taxes in a timely manner, which was due to the unstable value and profitability of property, rapidly changing in the conditions of galloping inflation. For fear of growing social discontent, the amount of non-taxable income of working citizens was increased threefold, with the function of collecting taxes assigned to the administration of enterprises and institutions. The budgets of the municipalities dragged out a miserable existence since, according to the legislation, they were formed based on a residual principle. The population evaded the voluntary payment of taxes, and the legal policy was based on the use of forceful methods of tax collection with the police and military teams involved.