Posted August 12, 2015

The field training site at Fort Sam Houston provides students enrolled in the METC BMET program training on standardized equipment used when deployed.

With more than 50 academic programs and 21,000 graduates per year, the Medical Education & Training Campus (METC) at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, TX, produces more trained biomedical equipment technicians (BMETs) than any other facility worldwide. Serving the Tri-Services (Air Force, Army, and Navy), the state-of-the-art facility uses an exacting, rigorous training module to educate qualified students on a range of essential skills for BMETs.

During AAMI’s late-August tour of the METC, “like drinking from a firehose" was a phrase heard repeatedly to describe the program—a testament to the intense pace of learning. The BMET training involves a 41-week basic course for Army and Air Force students, with Navy students undergoing a 54-week course. Following completion of the basic course, students may have the opportunity to enroll in advanced courses such as telemedicine, computed-based medical systems, ultrasound, and advanced radiology.

During the basic course, students interact with 50 to 60 different types of medical technology and undergo a minimum of 188 evaluations (written/performance tests), with Navy students requiring additional evaluations during their five additional advanced courses. The maximum allowed class size is 20 students, and the BMET program currently convenes 22 classes per year. On average, the program graduates a class, and begins a new one, every 11 days. The rigorous schedule is charted out far in advance via a “waterfall schedule"—a tool used by the educators to display exactly when classes begin and end. Scheduling to this level of exactitude can be critically important for students, many of whom have families on base. Assuming they don’t “wash back" (i.e., need to retake a course), students can see exactly when courses will be completed via the waterfall schedule.

Chief Michael Hayes, BMET training program director, noted that the METC exists to train all branches of services in standardized way. “The services build the requirements and METC trains the requirement," he said. Entrance into the program is based on how students score on the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) test, which they take when enlisting in the Armed Forces.

Chief Robert C. Bell, MTS, CBET, CRES, an instructor and curriculum developer for the U.S. Navy at the METC BMET program, spoke to the diversity of the student body, saying they can be 18- to 19-year-old soldiers “right out of boot camp" to reservists in their 30s and 40s. While previous medical training can vary for students depending on their branch of service, he noted that Navy students will have completed basic training and Hospital Corpsman training.

Bell also said that the program has a strong mentoring component: “As their instructors and mentors, we work with them daily to help with personal issues, financial, family, legal—pretty much whatever it takes to keep them focused in the classroom and lab and on seeing the task to completion."