U.S. Air Force Special Operations Surgical Team
EPISODE 16
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what is a special operations surgical team? what do they do? how do you get on the team? listen up and find out!!
Welcome back to the Team Room, here with the OnesReady squad. On this (Aaron’s favorite) episode the team learns all about SOST from two of the best SOST Team members in the world.
INTRO
You're listening to the Ones Ready podcast, a team of Air Force Special Operators forged in combat with over 70 years of combined operational experience as well as a decade of selection instructor experience. If you're tired of settling and you want to do something you truly believe in, you're in the right place. Now here's your host, PJ, team leader, ju-jitsu lover, meme enthusiast, and dad joke aficionado, Aaron Love.
SPECIAL OPERATIONS SURGICAL TEAMS
Aaron (00:00:28):
What's up everybody? Welcome back to another scrumptious delicious juicy episode of the Ones Ready podcast. We've got a good one for you today. Inside the team room we have heard as always all of your requests, all of the calls to action, all of the suggestions for what we should have on next. So today, 100% listen to you. You guys saw the post, you guys put your questions in. Well today with the SOST members that were lucky enough to grace us with their presence to come on the podcast, we are going to talk all things SOST. We wanted to start out as always with a little gratitude, just a little bit of thank you. Thanks to everybody that's been following the page, going to the website, checking the YouTube channel, following the Instagram, engaging on there. We're here for you and we appreciate you guys engaging. And again, thank you from us to you, the entire team. We appreciate you go out there as well and check out everybody that's affiliated with us. You guys have seen them around. If you need some dope coffee, if you need some energy, if you need a better pack, all of those are our friends and they do a whole lot of good things for the community, all military and vet owned. So go check them out. You guys know they you guys know the deal with that. So you can also check the full video. This one on YouTube. There's a whole lot like exclusive content that we're planning on putting out on the YouTube channel as well. So keep an eye on there. Subscribe, go check out the videos that we already got on there. Everything's going great on that channel. All that out of the way. You asked. We answered today two of the hardest hitting far this forward tippiest tip of the spear medical capability operators in the entire world. I don't have any idea how I'm qualified to make that call, but I know that it's still true. Sully and Rae, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for coming on guys. How you doing?
Rae (00:02:09):
Hey, thanks for having us we're doing great.
Sully (00:02:11):
Appreciate you letting us all on.
Aaron (00:02:13):
Oh man it was, it's definitely our pleasure. We've gotten so many questions. You know, I know with Brian and How To Be A PJ and then us with the Ones Ready project, we have gotten so many questions about SOST and as I alluded to earlier, none of us are qualified to even start talking about it. As we all know, Brian is basically doing a stolen Valor sort of thing with his PA thing. He's not even a PA. He does it for clout on the internet. We wanted to bring on the subject matter experts because again, we could muddle our way through this and talk about it, but really to hear it from the horse’s mouth so to speak, phrasing, we want to hear from you guys exactly what it is that you are, what it is that you do and what kind of capabilities you guys bring forward. So man, I'm going to open it up to Rae first. Can you just tell us how it is that you happened into SOST we're going to talk about what SOST is like or we're going to answer a bunch of the questions from the podcast listeners and from the, for the people on Facebook. So a lot of the, what it is and what you guys do we'll handle later. But how did you find your way into it Rae?
RAE FINDS HER WAY
Rae (00:03:25):
Always interested in austere medicine. Jumped at the opportunity.
Aaron (00:04:32):
Hurray. That's you in a nutshell. Sully, it's probably a different path for you, a path for you because you're an enlisted dude. So how did you hear about it and then how did you work your way on the team?
SULLY FINDS HIS WAY
Sully (00:04:42):
Long path to join. Finally made it to selection.
Aaron (00:05:48):
Nice man. Yeah, we're going to talk about that selection later. That was a specific question. So, we'll, we'll hit all that stuff up and kind of later on the podcast. But yeah, that's, that's awesome. A lot of people don't even know that SOST is a part of Special Tactics Squadrons. Like, you know, Rae, you mentioned you're down at Hurby. So a lot of people don't even know that. Like, can you tell them where SOST operates? Like you don't have to get into anything OPSECy, but how many, how many teams are there out there?
WHERE DOES SOST OPERATE?
Rae (00:06:12):
Anywhere. Everywhere.
Peaches (00:07:31):
Can I step in here real quick? But just because I'm a really, and I mean really dumb enlisted dude, so I really want to emphasize that. So what is SOST?
Rae (00:07:49):
SOST is a six person surgical team that goes far forward as far forward as the ground force commander. Whoever's in charge of those operations will allow in order to provide damage, control, surgery, resuscitation to casualties. So that can mean as close as a kilometer, maybe a little bit more to where the action is going on. And that all depends on what the mission dictates. We will go much further than any other medical team and therefore require more tactical training in order to be able to protect ourselves and not be a liability to the ground forces.
Peaches (00:08:29):
Okay. All right. And what, and I'm sorry, I'm going to steal this real quick. What is a construct like you say you say six, six person team, right? So what, what are those, how are those broken out?
Rae (00:08:42):
Surgeon, anesthesiologist, surgeon assistant, 3 resuscitation folks.
Brian (00:10:34):
So, going back, talking about all these different multi-disciplinary people that you have onboard, it's got to be kind of tough to assess. I know we talk about like with Pararescue, we're kind of looking for the same type of things like leadership and all this stuff and we're assessing all their skills at the same time because they're pretty basic and we can teach them what they're doing. But for a person that's coming like straight out of like me, I'm going to a PA school or somebody that you know is out of your candidate, can we please? Right. I know I'm not supposed to actually talk directly to an ER physician because I'm still in PA school and I'm a candidate. And anytime you get a desk available, right, you can jack your feet up, right? Yeah. I'm going to have to right after I'm done, while she's talking that way it doesn't interrupt the podcast, but how does a person, you know, kind of like me at the bottom go up to you guys and how do, who do I talk to kind of figure out that assessment process and what does that look like?
Rae (00:11:39):
Yeah. So do you want to talk about assessment?
Sully (00:11:42):
How about we do this? How about you go over like how to reach out and how to kind of get to conduct and then we can kind of dive into the assessment phase of it.
GOING INTO SOST
Rae (00:11:49):
Be qualified in the medical field required. Assess.
Aaron (00:12:39):
Can you imagine if I just showed up at your unit and I was like, hi, I'm Aaron. I'd like to be a surgeon. That alone would turn you away regardless. I would turn me away. Holy cow, I wouldn't want to be on this. I wouldn't even let me in the unit. How'd you even get on base? You idiot.
Rae (00:13:01):
Google a Special Operation Surgical Team Special Tactics and they'll pull up to the 24 Special Operations Wing website and it actually has a link to the application there.
Aaron (00:15:10):
Should we just end it there? That's exactly why we had you guys on. Like we wouldn't know any of that. So man, perfect. So Sully transition right into it, man. So phase one, and then we're getting into selection here and then just touch onto how it's different for the enlisted. You know, you're a respiratory therapist by trade. So just kind of talk about that stuff too, so.
SOST SELECTION
Sully (00:15:39):
Be good at your job. Be a good team player. Don’t be crazy. Be physically capable.
Peaches (00:18:25):
Sully, you brought up something though that and I think it's a, it's a common trend that I think the listeners need to understand and be aware of is you said physical standards and you said psychological tests during selection. Right? You guys aren't the only ones that we do that with. We do it with every single one of the Special Warfare career fields and also special warfare is not the only one that does that. All of the other soft communities do that. So this is nothing new and it goes kind of, I'm trying to tie it back into the SWOE contract thing, but these psych tests are huge and we, and it helps us determine the type of person that we need. Now we don't base every single decision on, you know, how Sully's or Rae's psych tests go because we need to see you actually perform and work in a team dynamic. But that's an important aspect of it I think anyway.
Rae (00:19:24):
Being a good teammate is important.
Aaron (00:20:54):
Man, that's, that's exactly like how we find our team. Like do you want to be deployed with this person? Do you want to live in a team room with this person? Do you want to share your intimate details with this person? It's crazy how things are so, like we're all looking for personalities, right? We value personality over almost all other things. You know, other than competence, you have to be competent in your job first. But we value this. Yeah, absolutely.
Sully (00:21:17):
Whole person concept for selection.
Aaron (00:22:38):
Yeah, no that man that's really cool. And I imagine it has to be really tough too, especially thinking about that selection, thinking about those non selects, Holy cow. That has to be at a kick in the pants cause you're already established, like somebody come in and you know, 18 years old coming fresh out of high school and go into A&S and getting a non-select like they have time to recover from that and whatever. But have you guys ever experienced like having a non-select that was just that you were just like, listen, you're very competent, you're just the wrong person.
Rae (00:23:06):
Yeah, I mean, so every selection that we have, there's, there's about 30% (ish). Would you say 30% Sully?
Sully (00:23:18):
I mean it's a strong variance based on, you know, based on the needs, based on what, you know, who's in there. There's, it's a strong variance, right? Yeah.
Rae (00:23:27):
Not always enough slots on team for all qualified candidates.
Sully (00:24:52):
Real quick on that, the selection process coming over to SOST is, it's very much, and this is what I try to tell people when they're coming over is a job interview, right? It is literally like, if you're not viewing it as like setting yourself up for an interview, a job that you are interviewing for and you are trying to make yourself the most worthwhile candidate, like you're coming into it at a disadvantage already.
Rae (00:25:16):
And we're getting interviewed to like look at it two ways. Like not only are we assessing them, but there, we give them a pretty good taste of how it's going to be in and stuff. So they, they have to interview us as far as figuring out whether or not that's a lifestyle that they're going to want to do.
Sully (00:25:32):
Looking for driven leaders.
Aaron (00:26:26):
Nice. I guess what you just made a sound clip too, congratulations. Sully, you're famous. Speaking of being famous, I'm sure you guys both saw the post. It was one of the most engaged posts that we've had that that was out there with questions and stuff. I didn't forward any of these questions to you guys on purpose. We were talking before the podcast and Sully was like, Hey, didn't see the outlines like yeah cause I didn't send it to you cause I want it. Exactly. So what we're going to do is I took a whole bunch of those questions from the posts. We're going to have a lightning round sort of thing. So we're directly from the listeners, from the people that engage. We're going to have some questions for you. I'm going to throw it over to Trent. He's going to ask the first one here. You guys haven't seen him because he's Special Reconnaissance so he's basically blacked out. He's basically blacked out or his eyes. Yeah, exactly. There's no biometrics. I'm not even, I've never, I'm pretty sure it's Jason Bourne.
Q & A
Trent (00:27:37):
This'll be easy because I'm pretty sure y'all, you already answered this, but it is from Yosef Thomas. Can I go Pararescue and then SOST?
Sully (00:27:58):
No direct path.
Peaches (00:29:51):
Next question is from sodpoodle. That's pretty cool. So in a magical world. What one skill would you like to see SOF medical people, (18D, PJ, CRCs). What skill would you like? Would you like to see them be trained in and able to use that they currently can't do?
Rae (00:33:09):
Yeah. Oh my goodness. Okay. So R. E. B. O. A. It stands for resuscitative endovascular balloon occlusion of the aorta.
Rae (00:33:34):
Balloon tourniquet for Aorta?
Sully (00:37:16):
Ultrasounds…not just for babies.
Rae (00:39:15):
Timing of when to assess variable based on medical training and abilities.
Sully (00:41:48):
Always look for ways to improve your skills.
Sully (00:43:17):
Work out like someone else’s life depends on it.
Aaron (00:44:33):
So next up from Bishop_FRS. What are some of the schools SOST can attend, Airborne, Freefall, Ranger School, etc. So what are some of the opportunities you guys have coming up? And again, taking them straight up off the page, man. They're hitting all the controversial stuff. Yeah, it's perfect.
Rae (00:44:57):
Mostly shoot, move, communicate training.
Sully (00:46:40):
Radical opportunities for mission specific training.
Trent (00:48:21):
From Nick Conroy. How close does SOST get to combat, stay on base and wait for PJ's to bring them back?
Rae (00:48:35):
Real close.
Sully (00:49:46):
Ground Force Commander determines how close SOST gets to the fight. Situation dependent.
Rae (00:51:19):
Enemy typically mounts attacks at worst possible time.
Aaron (00:53:57):
I just wanted to end on a lighter note there. I wanted to say thank you guys for coming on. You guys absolutely crushed this for you guys that weren't paying attention. Rae and I actually did deploy together and we've had a long you know, professional relationship from, from the time that we met, she deployed with us and Rae, Sully, I just want to say thanks for coming on. You guys absolutely crushed this for everybody that had any questions about SOST in general. Is there any parting shots you guys want to throw out there?
Rae (00:54:30):
Yeah, so I just wanted a couple of things. First of all, if you come on the SOST you're going to be assigned to a team and that team is going to be your family for the whole time. So when Sully and I were on a team together, we literally trained together. So for what's four to six months before we headed out and deployment. And then the six months on deployment, we were spending almost every minute together getting prepared for that. So you get to know your team incredibly well, which actually helps the dynamics when you're downrange and knowing and anticipating what each other are going to do and being able to basically work almost without talking because you, you just know what the, your team members are going to want, what they're going to do on their stress. The second thing is we're, we're moving all the teams to locations in which you're working day to day in a level one trauma center. So you're going to be in either the university of Alabama at Birmingham or at a Las Vegas and you work in the level one trauma center seeing patients and keeping your skills up and then your extra people to them. So if you have to go train or do we exercise or deploy or whatever, you're good to go and your team cuts out and heads out. And that's how we're keeping ourselves relevant. That way we're not wasting away in some military hospital not seeing all the things that we really need to see. So there's really good opportunities to be able to keep your skills up and do some really good medicine while you're home and then also do really good medicine that you're never going to see on the civilian side when you're downrange. Yeah, that's the only thing. Those were the only two things I had left. Sully, do you have anything?
Sully (00:56:09):
Yeah, that's, I mean, just like any, any decision or career field like this, this path comes with its own sacrifices. Just like you guys all have had sacrifices, time away from family time deployed time training, all those kinds of things. But going through it is probably been one of the best decisions that I personally made. I got to do some really interesting, neat, cool stuff. And you know, those, those times where you are able to make a difference are what make it worthwhile, you know, in the end of it. So, I've loved the opportunities I've had over here. I continue to Bush and find the new ones and like, like hanging out with you guys, just to again, kind of continue that chain. So thanks for having us on. I appreciate it.
Aaron (00:56:51):
Yeah. And it was our pleasure. Like I couldn't be more thankful to have the, the two subject matter experts for SOST on you know, in you and not just cause we're friends and everything, but because you guys are the best possible people.
Brian (00:57:07):
Just real quick. I just wanted to say thanks again for coming on, but also if guys want to reach out to you, they go to that link that you were talking about earlier in the podcast or any specific where to go. Okay.
Rae (00:57:18):
Yeah, if you go to that link that I'll send it to you in an email and that way you can, you can post it with it. And then I mean people can look me up on the, on the global if they're in the Air Force already. Oh, the other thing is if you're in the Army, Navy, civilian, like you can come to assessment and check it out. There's a little bit more paperwork that has to happen to switch over from the Army and the Navy. If you want to come to the Air Force, we don't, it's not joint. But anyway, we're on global. You can look us up. We're having to answer questions, but a lot of the questions will be answered by going to that website and clicking on the application and taking a look. We do, we're doing three selections this year. We just had one in the beginning of this month. So there's two more selections that are going on this year. And we typically have two to three a year. So, if you guys like happy to help, so glad that you guys asked us and if there's more follow-up questions or you want to, you know, just talk more nerd stuff and learn about we can, you know, arrange and do another set up.
RECAP
Brian (00:58:35):
Yeah. Again, thank you so much for taking the time to come out. We had so many questions out there, we had tons of comments on that post and I know you guys are kind of tracking on all these people that are going to come and hit you up right now. So again, get ready for that wave all these students that are in med school right now and they're like, these guys are so awesome. They read all the articles and stuff and you know some of the information is a little bit harder to find but it's good to put a face to the career field and just kind of see what you guys are doing. It's really awesome to hear the stories firsthand from you guys because I hadn't personally worked with you guys before, but I know Aaron had any talk, nothing but the best of you guys. So again, for all of you guys that are out there and considering this career field, like they said, don't make a meandering path through Pararescue and try and get your little war ribbons or whatever, try and get your hats to put up on you, your shadow box. When you do that, you're joining any career field and you're going to be accepted into any career field because of the person that you are, their passion, whatever it lies in. If it's an emergency medicine, if it's, you know, doing ropes and doing that technical rescue, then go PJ or go something else. But show up qualified and have the right personality. Like you said in any SOF environment is going to be that team dynamic that's really going to keep you around. Of course you have to know your job and you have to do all that stuff, but you have to be that kind of person that everyone else can rely on. They can trust you to act whenever stuff happens. Just like the doc and Sully were saying, there's a lot of different things and factors that come into play and we can't always put those into scenarios, but we have to be able to trust the person by our side. So again, thank you all and we will throw up the links to any of the stuff that we were talking about. So you guys can contact them and we'd love to have you guys on in a future episode for sure. Cause I know there's going to be a bunch of follow-up questions about specifically like the selection and they want to hear some more stories, of course, from all the stuff you guys had done. But yeah. So thanks again and we'd love to have you on again. Thanks. Appreciate it. Cool. All right. See you guys next time. Awesome. Train hard.
TLDR: SOST is amazing.
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