The Washington Post has a fascinating short expose into the training of Navy doctors who are using Chicago-area hospitals for trauma experience. Due to the high violent crime rate, Navy doctors and nurses are put into rotation and gain exposure to gunshots, knife wounds, and other serious injuries.

How do you prepare Navy doctors for a war zone? Send them to a Chicago trauma unit.

A new partnership with a Cook County hospital is allowing military medical personnel access to the trauma patients that it serves in Chicago, which is grappling with so much gun violence on its South and West sides…”

Sometimes called “Chi-Raq” by locals and people in the area, Chicago has a steady stream of violence that creates the training atmosphere. However, it is not the sole city used for trauma training.

Navy personnel also train in Los Angeles, where gang violence has left doctors treating a steady stream of stabbing and shooting victims. “It’s a shame that Los Angeles has so much violence,” surgeon John Newman told the Los Angeles Times in 2003, “but from a training standpoint — fantastic.”

The title photo is from Mizzou Magazine, which aslo has an interesting article on doctors learning treatment from warzones.