SOCM Overview

The Special Operations Combat Medic (SOCM) Course is a 36-week program of instruction that teaches eight 87-student classes per year. The target audience for SOCM is Army and Navy enlisted service members who hold, or are designated for assignment to a special-operations medical position. The course qualifies these enlisted service members as highly-trained combat medics with the necessary skills and abilities to provide initial medical and trauma care and aptitude to increase team survivability. SOCM is designed to teach the Special Operations Combat Medic the knowledge and skills required to manage combat casualties from initial point of injury through evacuation. Additionally, the course teaches the student skills which enable him to prescribe appropriate treatments for diagnosed disease in accordance with tactical medical emergency protocols and their corresponding formulary. Students graduating from SOCM are certified as National Registry EMTs at the Basic level. They are also qualified in Basic Life Support, Pediatric Education for Pre-Hospital Providers and Advanced Cardiac Life Support. The goal of the program is to produce competent entry-level Paramedics in the cognitive (knowledge), psychomotor (skills), and affective (behavior) learning domains. The course consists of seven different blocks of instruction each lasting twenty-five working days. The blocks are structured to progress a student from having no medical background to performing and understanding acute life-saving interventions in 36 weeks.