Julio is a Resident Physician in Temple University’s hospital system as well as a Flight Surgeon with the United States Air Force, serving with the New Jersey Air National Guard out of Atlantic City. When at Temple, Julio is doing rounds and checking on his patients, who can range from stroke victims to amputees. When with the Air Force, Julio is clearing fighter pilots for flying as well as riding along in-flight to monitor the pilot’s health. Find out how Julio utilizes his military experience and skills in his civilian life!
Transcript
My name is Julio Gomez, I'm a resident physician at Temple University for the physical medicine and rehabilitation department. And I am a flight surgeon for the New Jersey International Guard. Within the physical medicine and rehabilitation department our goal is to bring back individual's function after a spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury, orthopedic procedures, and countless trauma. Temple's residency, you're covering multiple hospitals. You're covering Temple University, Einstein Elkins Park, which is MossRehab, which is a renowned rehab hospital. We also cover a MossRehab floor at Einstein main campus Philadelphia. So we see a variety of patients. We see from lung transplants to patients with LVADs, traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, amputees. So as a resident at Temple and at MossRehab usually working 60 hours a week during your residency, 60 to 80 hours. Because I'm now in the international guard, I have to serve one week in a month, during that week in a month that's when I dedicate myself and I act as a flight surgeon for the international guard. We have F-16s stationed at Atlantic City and my role is to be the aeromedical expert on medical needs for fighter pilots and other individuals who are in jumping status, flying status. We clear them aeromedically, there are certain illnesses, medical conditions, that do affect you at altitude, flight surgeons tend to be the experts and that's also why we also are part of the air crew structure. So we're considered air crew. So during my previous station I was at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida where I was able to fly in the back seat of fighter jets along with my patients, who are actually fighter pilots. We take call from MossRehab, which is a 24 hour call and at night time we cover all three hospitals. So let's say you're at Moss, you have a neurological emergency there, we treat that there and then 30 minutes later we have another patient who has an acute issue at Temple, we drive to Temple, take care of that and drive back to Moss.
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