On Monday 5 April at the Air Force Academy, as part of the series of thematic lectures scheduled in the syllabus, a meeting was held with the Head of the Italian Air Force Medical Service, Inspector General Giuseppe Ciniglio Appiani, during which some specific aspects of future employment in the Air Force for academy students enrolled in the degree course in Medicine and Surgery.
During the conference, the following issues were addressed specific topics regarding the activities of Medical Officers in unit infirmaries and in operations outside national borders, with a focus on the anti-SARS-CoV-2 vaccination campaign.
Of particular interest to academics was the speech by a young colleague, assigned for about a year to’Main Infirmary of Pratica di Mare, where he serves as Squadron Medical Officer, who enthusiastically recounted their experience as a doctor in uniform, thrust straight after academy training into the armed forces healthcare organisation most involved in operational activities.
Of further notable interest was also the intervention relating to postgraduate training courses, in particular access to specialisation schools. The constant synergy between the Italian Air Force Academy and the Italian Air Force Health Corps was also emphasised, aimed at improve the professional healthcare training of the students balancing it with the priority requirements related to military training.
The conference was, in this regard, an opportunity to illustrate the’implementation of the agreement between the Academy and the “Cardarelli” National Hospital Trust of Naples, thanks to which students in the final three years of the degree course undertake a training and educational pathway in the areas of health emergencies and accident and emergency, with the aim of forming and implementing practical skills in the field of emergency medicine, a sign of the extreme closeness of the military institution to the local area that hosts it and to one of its realities of excellence, represented in the audience by Doctor Fiorella Paladino, Director of the Emergency Medicine and Accident and Emergency Unit of the Cardarelli, and Doctor Filomena Liccardi, coordinator of the traineeship activity.
Acting as host was Air Brigadier General Paolo Tarantino, Commander of the’Air Force Academy, who also wanted among the guests the President of the School of Medicine and Surgery of the Federico II University of Naples, Professor Maria Triassi, who in her speech underlined the close bond and the ever-fruitful collaboration between the Federico II university and the Air Force Academy.
The conference was also the occasion for the presentation of the new “MediTec” Technological Medicine and Surgery degree course at the Federico II University, by the coordinator, Professor Sabino De Placido, who in his speech emphasised its deeply innovative characteristics, aimed at a conscious management of technological development in medicine and related sectors (“Precision medicine”, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Nanotechnology, Robotics, Radiomics and Bioprosthetics).
The speech was particularly appreciated by the Head of the Medical Service, who underlined in his remarks the need to consciously manage the technological development of medicine, remembering how the very nature of training in Aerospace Medicine has, since its inception, been inextricably linked with modernity and technological progress.
