Every day, hundreds of patients are seen at University Medical Center of Southern Nevada (UMC), attended to by the hospital’s thousands of doctors, nurses, and other clinical staff. And while most patients probably wouldn’t notice the difference, on any given day, some of those medical professionals are likely to be active-duty military members.

That’s thanks to the Las Vegas Military-Civilian Partnership (MCP), which brings military medical personnel into civilian healthcare settings throughout Southern Nevada.

For the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV, the partnership provides something equally valuable: an opportunity for medical students, residents, and faculty to learn and work alongside military physicians and medics who bring different clinical experiences and perspectives to the healthcare environment.

“UNLV provides the academic structure that makes much of this partnership possible — the residency programs, faculty, medical education, and research infrastructure,” says Dr. Jeremy Kilburn, a retired Air Force pulmonary critical care physician, He helped develop the partnership and remains on faculty at UNLV and is employed at UMC. “UMC provides the clinical environment and patient volume, and the military brings personnel, funding, and operational experience. We need all three to make this work.”

A Partnership Built Around Training

The relationship between UNLV, UMC, and military medicine is particularly significant when it comes to graduate medical education.

The military sponsors and funds 41 resident positions in UNLV programs, providing training opportunities that would be difficult to replace through other funding sources. UMC is already above its federal cap for funded residency positions, making the military support an important contribution to UNLV’s medical education mission.

Military residents train alongside their civilian colleagues, care for the same patients, and meet the same training requirements. 

“They are part of the residency team throughout their training,” Kilburn says.

Military physicians also serve as UNLV faculty, providing clinical supervision, bedside teaching, and mentorship to medical students and residents.

The Office of Military Medicine, an Air Force entity that coordinates the larger military-civilian partnership, works closely with UNLV faculty to integrate military medical personnel into appropriate clinical and educational programs.

“UNLV facilitates integration into their educational and clinical programs,” says Col. Dallas Hansen, director of the Office of Military Medicine and an Air Force surgeon. “For instance, we have military residents in multiple different UNLV residency programs, and we have attending physicians who are designated as UNLV faculty to educate and train UNLV medical students and residents while working at UMC.”

That interaction gives UNLV medical students and residents access to physicians with experiences that extend beyond traditional civilian medicine.

Military physicians and medics may also bring experience caring for patients in deployed environments, working with limited resources or leading teams in difficult circumstances. Those experiences can add another perspective to discussions about critical care and disaster response. 

“There is also value in simply working together every day,” Kilburn says. “Civilian trainees get a better understanding of military medicine, and military personnel learn from the breadth and complexity of the patients we care for at UMC. Both become better clinicians through that exposure.”

Training for the Real World

For Dr. Taylor Schanda, that exposure was one of the reasons she chose Las Vegas for her military surgical residency.

When Schanda was deciding where to complete her training, she had never even been to Las Vegas. But after learning about the Las Vegas MCP, she saw an opportunity to gain the kind of clinical experience she wanted.

“In medical school I did a rotation at a military hospital, and we took care of young airmen and their families and occasionally a VA patient,” Schanda says. “But these are young people without a lot of health issues. It wasn’t the best training. I figured if I’m doing this residency to learn to become a surgeon, I wanted to work hard and see complicated patients.”

Schanda served as a general surgery resident with the 99th Surgical Operations Squadron at Nellis Air Force Base while completing her five-year residency at UMC in the UNLV general surgery residency program. Her typical workday on active duty looked much like that of her civilian counterparts. But the routine day at UMC also brought cases that proved invaluable to her military training.

“We also saw a lot of penetrative trauma here, like knife wounds and gunshots,” she says, “which, if you’re thinking like a military surgeon, those are the injuries you’re going to see while deployed.” 

After completing her UNLV surgical residency at UMC, she served four years of active-duty service at Nellis Air Force Base and became UNLV faculty, continuing to work at UMC training residents in the UNLV surgery residency while keeping up her own skills for expeditionary deployment. 

When Schanda separated from the Air Force, she chose to remain in Las Vegas, joining the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV. Her path illustrates the benefits the broader Southern Nevada healthcare system as well. 

In addition to the 41 military-funded residency positions, the military contributes personnel and expertise to a region that continues to need more health care professionals. And when they leave their military service, they may choose to return to a community facing a shortage of healthcare personnel.

“Healthcare [infrastructure] here hasn’t grown at the same rate as the population,” notes Dr. Kilburn.

The partnership has helped integrate military and civilian emergency medical services, including the Mike O’Callaghan Military Medical Center, which is the only Air Force facility in the country that treats civilian critical care and trauma patients.

That spirit of integration proved critical during recent crises. Both Hansen and Kilburn noted how the Military-Civilian Partnership was involved in the response to the One October shooting and COVID-19 pandemic. 

“We had a workforce of people ready to help out,” Hansen says. “UMC was the hub of care, and we already had personnel integrated into the hospital who were able to immediately help. And we’re ready to do that again in the future.”