Hospital

The jungles of Vietnam and the guerrilla warfare tactics employed by the enemy contributed to several challenges in providing care for troops. It was nearly impossible to safely set up a mobile aid station near conflicts within the thick canopy of trees and overgrowth. Instead, MEDEVACs transported the wounded to hospitals located on the fringe of combat. These hospitals, referred to as field hospitals, functioned like 400-bed hospitals in the States complete with specialists and surgical teams. If patients required more care, they were evacuated to a larger medical facility outside of the country.

In the years after Vietnam, the distance between the battlefield and the hospital began to shorten, notably with the inclusion of the Forward Surgical Team (FST) during the Global War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. The FST was a mobile aid station that could hold upwards of 30 patients and could be set up close to combat in under 72 hours. The primary objective was to provide quick resuscitative care and damage control surgery that would further stabilize a patient for evacuation to a larger theater of care. Shortening the amount of time from point of injury to pre-hospital care at an FST meant injuries that otherwise may have been fatal in previous wars, such as loss of limbs, could now be considered significantly less life-threatening.