Вишкіл офіцерів запасу у Львівському медичному інституті (1944–1991)

Abstract

Ukraine has been at war with Russia since 2014. Right now, in 2022 an estimated 100,000 Russian troops have been deployed near Ukraine. It is important that even medical units have been sent to the Ukrainian border. In these conditions military training of the students of higher medical educational institutions is clearly actual. After all, the specific of this profession is that future doctors must be able to perform their work in combat conditions, and in unstable times of emergencies and so on. During the Soviet period, despite frequent reforms and changes in the military education system, military training of medical students was taken as seriously as possible. That is why the aim of the study is to investigate the process of how reserve officers were trained at the military department of the Lviv State Medical Institute throughout the Soviet period. The study focuses on the process of theoretical and practical training of medical students. The military department of the Medical Institute worked continuously throughout the Soviet period (1944–1991). From 1944−1945 academic year students of the medical and pharmaceutical faculties, regardless of gender, studied here for 5 and 4 years respectively. Besides some general military courses: general military training, tactic and fire training, students took more specific disciplines: sanitary protection, pathology and therapy, organization and tactics of the sanitary service, military field surgery, organization of the stages of medical evacuation, organization of the medical points. From the mid-1960s, students of the medical, pediatric, dental, and pharmaceutical faculties studied at the military department. The training of male students of medical and pediatric faculties was stricter and stronger as they were preparing for the camp training, while students of the dental and pharmaceutical faculties, as well as female students of the medical and pediatric faculties did not pass camps. Military department had such cycles of training: organization and tactics of the medical service, weapons of mass destruction, medical supplies, and the course of Civil Defense. It is important to note, that according to the results of inspections in 1970–1980, military department of the Lviv Medical Institute was the flagship of the training of medical officers among the universities of Carpathian Military District and one of the best in the Ukrainian SSR.