EFMB is an army abbreviation for Expert Field Medical Badge. It's a competition available to soldiers of all ranks in medical occupations. At this competition, in Ft. Bragg, ranks from Private through Major were in attendance. I did well on the written test and felt pretty confident about testing on "the lanes," but missed the mark on the land navigation test, something I haven't done since basic training, 3.5 years ago, and is done with army, methods, maps, compass and protractor. The Test Lanes are much as it sounds. Soldiers progress along a path, in this case, the North Carolina forests of Bragg, and demonstrate skills and competence in various tasks, medical and military alike. The photos are of the train up and course orientation in fairly casual situations. The actual testing went unphotographed and involved a far more serious scene and stressful scenarios.
I enjoyed the experience, and look forward to my next attempt, perhaps in August. Doing things like this competition, and other forms of non-deployment training and and self development have been unavailable till coming to Fort Bragg. The first three years of my army career were spent in Basic/AIT, then assignment to a line unit - a military police unit that had the development of medics low in its priorities. Then there was 15 months in Iraq. Now I'm working at Womack Army Medical Center and I've had time to sharpen my skill set in clinical and field environments.
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