National Defence committee  My work doesn't focus on mild traumatic brain injury or post-traumatic stress, so I can't say. It's not my area of expertise.

National Defence committee  I'm not aware that it's being looked at in terms of an app. The device that we were talking about previously, the ultrasound, is a device that, if developed and if it works out in clinical trials, would be given to the medics to provide information about their clinical status that might be important in our treatment.

National Defence committee  In attending general NATO medical meetings my sense is that our allies greatly respect our current programs, and we're considered leaders in the world on how we manage post-traumatic stress disorder, the degree of our inclusiveness and the size of our programs. As a researcher myself I'd always say research is great because you never have enough answers.

National Defence committee  Actually I don't know the answer to that; I can get back to you. I don't know the breakdown of how many are new nurses or experienced nurses.

National Defence committee  Like anything, I guess, when anyone changes their career, there are probably multiple reasons. I think the biggest cohort who leave after their obligatory service, after their training.... For example, when I joined, my goal actually was just to pay for medical school. My intention was to serve my three years.

National Defence committee  Throughout the course of a war, I think trauma care is usually advanced, because what happens is that all the trauma clinicians see a problem and they try their best to improve the care on the battlefield or at the combat support hospitals or the field hospitals. For that reason, care is usually improved during the conflict.

National Defence committee  And thank goodness it's rare. It presented as a phone call about multiple casualties. As you know, information can sometimes be very scant at the very beginning. It was that anywhere from 10 to 30 patients with possible gunshot wounds might arrive at Sunnybrook. As the trauma surgeon on call that night, I drove in right away.

National Defence committee  There are huge efforts in terms of doing research on this. What you really need is better detection, better prevention. Once you're in the blast, if you're right on the blast, there's very little that medical care can do. From the medical side, a lot of the research focuses on the mild traumatic brain injury—what does that shock wave actually do to people?

National Defence committee  Thank you very much for that excellent question. I'll speak both about the medical technicians and about nursing. You've probably heard of this thing called tactical combat casualty care. This is a system of pre-hospital care that focuses directly on what injures soldiers on the battlefield.

National Defence committee  I can't say. I'm not aware of the U.S. program that you're referring to. The Canadian program has a very specific focus. It's really to diagnose bleeding in the abdomen in the field. That is helpful in terms of improving the triage of that patient. If we knew they were bleeding in their abdomen, we might prioritize them in an evacuation scheme more quickly.

National Defence committee  It's not at the clinical trials level yet. It's still at the preclinical trials level.

National Defence committee  I don't know. The current problem is that it's really an issue at the level of mathematics and physics, in terms of how you use sonar. So I really don't know. I'm sort of waiting for it at the clinical level. I would then be involved with the clinical trials.

National Defence committee  We're very interested in it. I am very interested, and I think health services is interested in it. We're following it along, but obviously certain aspects of science are difficult to push along.

National Defence committee  The Major Sir Frederick Banting chair is a research chair. What it allows me to do as the chairholder is to make connections with the U.S. military, our allies, with the Australians, to do collaborative research, and to fund, say, some young Canadian Forces medical officer who's interested in research that's relevant to the military.

National Defence committee  Yes. While I was there I did shifts in the emergency departments at various hospitals in the Ottawa Valley.