The territorial army is launching a campaign to recruit 2,500 health care professionals into the army medical services (AMS).
Speaking at the TA's medical exercise "Petit Mash", held at 306 Field Hospital, Towthorpe Lines, in Strensall, Yorkshire, on September 18, Major Phil Gunter (chief of staff of the headquarters of the AMS TA) said: "The strategic defence review has given the army medical services an increase in the number of nurses, doctors, pharmacists and professions allied to medicine that we can recruit."
This had created a vacuum that needed to be filled.
Major Gunter said that exercise Petit Mash, a 48-hour operation that all AMS TA field hospitals had to complete every three years, "is a chance for the TA to train in their operational role." This particular exercise involved 50 beds with two surgical teams. "We expect to put through and treat 200 casualties by the end of the exercise," said Major Gunter. "This is training for war."
Major Craig McCarthy (pharmaceutical officer for the TA) told The Journal that the TA was looking to recruit both pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. "For a young pharmacist, this is a good way of gaining experience," he said. Within the AMS, pharmacists were responsible not only for pharmaceuticals but also for equipment such as that required by the field pathology laboratory and X-ray unit, said Major McCarthy.
"The pharmaceutical services are integrated with the rest of the TA because they are providing the equipment," he said. "This is an additional responsibility that pharmacists do not have within hospitals or in retail."
More information about the AMS is available from the TA (tel 0845 607 5000).