Table 2.

Potential Adaptations of Military Medicine Principles to the CICU During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Tenets of Military Medicine	Military Medical Examples	CICU Examples
Preparedness	Maintaining appropriate staffing Creating field hospitals	Staff alignment PPE inventory Modifying telemetry units and holding areas for care of cardiac critical care patients
Team-based care	Ensuring adequate body armor/PPE Perimeter security Improving morale	Limiting exposure Ensuring safety (PPE, security) Feeding staff/improving morale
Echelons of care	Stabilization at point of closest medical contact	Referring centers asked to exhaust capabilities before transfer
Augmenting the effort	Oil tankers converted to hospital ships Nonsurgical specialties playing operational roles	CICU rooms converted to have negative pressure capabilities Proceduralists or surgical specialties augmenting the intensivist pool
Effective triage	NATO classification of injured (immediate, delayed, minimal, expectant)	Effective triage of critically ill patients using clearly defined and ideally evidence-based protocols
Servant leadership	Aligning teams	Frequent updates and Q&A sessions (Town Halls with staff, virtual meetings, etc.)

NATO = North Atlantic Treaty Organization; Q&A = question and answer; other abbreviations as in Table 1.