text: Chapter 2
  to units located throughout the world to ensure the medical personnel are properly trained on how to deploy
  and employ the new equipment. For example, during the initial stages of Operation Enduring Freedom and
  Operation Iraqi Freedom, a new collective protection shelter system was fielded and training teams from the
  Army Medicine were deployed to unit locations worldwide to facilitate the transition and use of this new
  shelter system.
  2-169. The institutional force provides a vital link in ensuring the medical readiness of forces to be
  deployed. Mobilization stations within CONUS ensure Soldiers are medically processed for overseas
  deployments to include immunizations, eyewear, dental care, medications, resiliency training, and individual
  patient records are initiated and/or maintained. This ensures the operational commander has a healthy and
  fit force. For more information, refer to Appendix E.
  2-170. The institutional force provides the reachback capability for deployed forces. Requirements for
  medical specialty personnel generated during the conduct of operations are met by mobilizing and deploying
  medical resources in the institutional force to meet theater-specific requirements. Additionally, the
  institutional force provides definitive health care services; restorative, rehabilitative, and convalescent care
  to enhance and expand on the essential care provided to Soldiers in the deployment area.
  RELEVANT
  2-171. The AHS must provide relevant care based on current operational and strategic plans. The AHS
  must be adaptive and use innovative approaches and solutions for identified gaps and shortfalls, such as was
  done to establish the Wounded Warrior Program and to staff Warrior transition units to ensure that our
  Soldiers’ medical, rehabilitative, and convalescent needs were effectively addressed, as well as providing the
  appropriate command climate and unit support to either return the Soldier to military duty or to transition
  back to civilian life as a productive member of society.
  Clinical Aspects
  2-172. The clinical aspects of the operation involve the provision of medical care to sick, injured, and
  wounded Soldiers (or other designated beneficiaries) and the prevention of DNBI by medically trained
  individuals. The care extends from the place of injury or wounding and is usually provided initially by the
  combat medic assigned to a movement and maneuver or fires unit or by a health care provider at the battalion
  aid station through the successive roles of care to the CONUS-support base, if the patient’s medical condition
  so warrants. As patients are evacuated between roles of care, they receive en route medical care to sustain
  them, thus reducing the potential for their medical condition to deteriorate while in-transit.
  Operational Aspects
  2-173. The operational aspects of the mission include such military tasks as:
  * Maintaining situational understanding of the ongoing and future operations.
  * Providing timely support to the maneuver forces.
  * Maintaining the unit’s readiness posture.
  * Ensuring the survivability of the unit (such as unit perimeter defense, hasty firing positions, and
  patient bunkers). See ATP 3-37.34 Survivability Operations for more information.
  * Ensuring compliance with the law of land warfare (to include the Geneva Conventions).
  2-174. To accomplish the Army Medicine mission, a synchronization of the clinical and operational aspects
  must be achieved. It accomplishes nothing for a unit to provide the best clinical care, if it cannot survive the
  operation. Likewise, a unit that can execute all of its military tasks is not successful if the patients entrusted
  to its care die or their conditions deteriorate because no consideration was given to their clinical needs during
  an operational relocation.
  2-175. A balance must be achieved in prioritizing the requirements generated from both the operational and
  clinical aspects of the mission. Without synchronizing the response to the overall requirements, both
  operational and clinical, a shortfall in one sphere may have serious ramifications on mission success. A
  shortage of scalpel blades for an FST or FRSD adversely impacts the patient care mission as would a shortage
  of ammunition for use in perimeter defense which could lead to mission failure in an operational sense. If