SAN ANTONIO – Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery Force Master Chief Michael Roberts, director of Navy Medicine’s Hospital Corps hosted the Navy Medicine Senior Enlisted Leadership Symposium in San Antonio, Texas, March 14-16.
Representatives from 78 commands and activities gathered for the three-day event to discuss the future of the Hospital Corps and its role in supporting expeditionary medicine.
Roberts opened the conference by outlining his priorities for the future of the Hospital Corps and how they will deliver agile, scalable, trained, and certified medical units to the Fleet, Marine Corps, and the Joint Forces.
“We are increasing our warfighter capabilities, identifying our shortfalls, and working as a one Navy Medicine team to come up with intelligent solutions to current and future problems,” said Roberts. “The Hospital Corps is getting real, and getting better.”
Roberts also spoke about the requirements of Navy Medicine’s 2023 campaign order and how the Hospital Corps is preparing and posturing for sustained medical support for the future peer warfighting scenario.
“This is the biggest transition that Navy Medicine has ever experienced since its inception,” said Roberts.



Navy Surgeon General Rear Adm. Bruce Gillingham participated in the symposium and thanked the senior enlisted leadership in attendance for the critical role they play in the success of Navy Medicine.
“It’s been amazingly great to have been your Surgeon General, and I want to thank you all for the hard work during these periods of tremendous change,” said Gillingham. “This conference is an opportunity to really help shape the future of Navy Medicine going forward.”
Additional topics discussed at the conference included organizational design in support of distributed maritime operations, medical systems integration and combat survivability, maritime operations center, N3 operations, maritime headquarters, reserve policy and integration, total force manpower, operational medical training updates, and hospital corpsman trauma training. FORCE Roberts closed out the symposium by challenging the attendees.
“Thank you for attending and working together to improve our community,” said Roberts. “I challenge you to take what you learned here back to your Chief’s Mess to make our organization better.”
Force Master Chief Roberts, with leaders from the symposium visited Navy Medicine Training Support Center to recognize the schoolhouse efforts in increasing Sailor warfighter lethality.