FAIRBANKS- Foundation Health Partners (FHP) is a community owned and operated health system in a borough that is without a doubt a military community. It seems a natural fit for FHP to work with our military neighbors to promote a healthier and safer community. That was precisely the case during the fall session of the 2019 Farthest North Skills Fair at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital, which the FHP Education Department designed as one-stop-shop for skills assessment.

“We’re in our second year with the skills fair, and it’s been very successful,” said Clinical Educator Jennifer Gehrke, RN, MS. “We decided it would be better to have a house-wide fair rather than each department doing their individual skills assessments.”

FHP Education invited leaders from the 354th Medical Operations Squadron (MDOS) at Eielson Air Force Base (EAFB) to observe the 2019 spring session in May. Shortly thereafter, FHP and Eielson officials signed a Memorandum of Agreement to share educational resources with one another.

“It was an easy decision from our end,” said FHP Director of Education Chris Trudgen. “We share a common goal in the pursuit of excellence, so collaborating with the Eielson Medical Clinic makes perfect sense.”

Major Cynthia Lang, RN, CCNS, is the Education and Training Officer in Charge at the Eielson Medical Clinic. She helped coordinate the visit, and participated in some of the skills station drills. This is her first assignment in an outpatient setting, as she spent the first 18 years of her career as an ICU nurse. She is passionate about education, and jumped at the opportunity for her team to train with FHP.

“We were so excited when Chris offered us the opportunity to attend the skills fair,” Lang said. “Because we are a very small clinic, we don’t have the space or staff to support this type of event.”

Eielson Medical Clinic staff joined FHP for two days (Oct. 23, Oct.24) at the fair. While some of the skills tested at over 20 stations did not apply to their outpatient setting, Eielson staff agree that attending the skills fair was well worth a trip up the Richardson Highway.

“I wish we could do it more often,” said Airman First Class Chelsea Etheridge, a family health medical technician. “We don’t use some of these skills very often in our outpatient environment, so it’s very helpful to come in and refresh them in this setting.”

“There’s a lot of specialty care offered here that we don’t often see at Eielson, so it’s great to get that perspective,” added Sr. Airman Andre Orange.

Eielson staff attended the Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) and Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) stations, where they participated in a mock PALS code exercise. Again, skills they may not use on a day-to-day basis at the Eielson Medical Clinic, but valuable nonetheless.

“We still have emergencies on Eielson, and we are quite a bit away from the Emergency Department at FMH,” said Captain Victoria Zenyuch, RN. “Sometimes our primary care clinic is the one responding to a critical patient until the paramedics arrive. So it’s definitely important that we have our skills up and ready to go.”

Lang says it is important to reciprocate the offering and has invited FHP Education staff out to Eielson to learn more about how they train for their mission. According to Gehrke, FHP has already begun learning about how they function at the Eielson Medical Clinic.

“They’re already sharing their knowledge with us,” Gehrke said. “They practice their code skills once a month, so they’re pretty advanced in code skills.”

FHP Education staff plans to visit and tour the clinic on Eielson in the near future, to learn more about how the clinic operates and how staff receives education.