From April 20 to 23, 2026, Director Heejun Shin visited the Faculty of Health Studies at the Technical University of Liberec in Liberec, Czech Republic. This visit was not merely an overseas lecture trip. It was an important experiment in connecting a disaster medicine education model developed in Korea with the field of health sciences education in Europe.

The official theme of TUL’s ERASMUS+ Blended Intensive Programme was “Intensive Medicine in Action: Structured Lifesaving Procedures, Rapid Assessment and Teamwork Skills Training.” The onsite programme was held at the Faculty of Health Studies from April 20 to 24, 2026. The official course was an English-language, 3 ECTS, practice-oriented programme that included emergency care, simulation, team-based scenario training, the use of rescue equipment, mass-casualty incidents, and air rescue training.

The journey began with his arrival in Prague on April 17. As he later moved toward the Liberec region, Director Shin clearly felt that this visit was not simply an opportunity to deliver a single lecture. The central challenge was how to present Korea’s divided security reality, CBRNe threats, mass-disaster response experience, and the educational philosophy of CIREcourse to European students and faculty members. When he arrived in Liberec on the afternoon of Sunday, April 19, there was thunder, lightning, and heavy rain. Rather than being merely inconvenient weather, it seemed to symbolize the uncertainty and field realism that disaster medicine education must address.

Monday, April 20, marked the beginning of the main educational programme. In the morning, Director Shin visited Liberec Hospital and EMS-related sites, observing the regional emergency medical system and hospital-based response structure in the Czech Republic. Although Krajská nemocnice Liberec and the local EMS system differed from Korea in their institutional and operational contexts, the essential mission was the same: to triage patients, transport them, and connect them to hospital care during disasters. This site visit later became a foundation for teaching students not just theory, but systems-level thinking grounded in real emergency response structures.

On the same day, Director Shin delivered two 90-minute CIREcourse Chemical Disaster sessions for 41 TUL students. The core of the education was to help students understand what healthcare providers and rescue personnel should recognize first in a chemical disaster, how they should assess risk, and in what sequence they should manage patients and the scene. The lecture did not remain at the level of simply defining CBRN. Students had to understand scene safety, contamination risk, triage, decontamination, communication, and emergency medical coordination as one connected decision-making process. Based on Korea’s unique security environment and his experience in disaster medicine education, Director Shin emphasized that a chemical incident is not merely a toxic exposure event, but a complex crisis in which scene safety, command structure, hospital surge capacity, and public communication must operate simultaneously.

April 21 continued along the line of TUL’s local CBRNe education. Before moving into the international BIP workshop on April 22, this day served as a transition point for reviewing the previous day’s educational content, refining the CIREcourse educational tools and tabletop exercise structure, and coordinating the scenario operation method for international students. From an educator’s perspective, the most important task was to translate content designed in Korea into a format suitable for European learners, faculty members, and educational culture. This was not merely a translation of language. It required a translation of the way of thinking.

Wednesday, April 22, was one of the central days of the visit. The ERASMUS+ BIP international workshop included 24 students from seven countries: the Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Poland, Croatia, Lithuania, and Slovakia. Director Shin and three TUL faculty members taught together as a four-member instructional team. The official TUL course description also states that the programme aims to strengthen evidence-based emergency procedures, interprofessional communication, rapid triage assessment, hands-on skills, clinical reasoning, and teamwork in high-pressure emergency scenarios.

The education that day consisted of online-based interactive chemical disaster response, segmented practical training using CIREcourse disaster medicine educational tools, and Operation WOMBAT, a no-notice tabletop exercise game. Students did not enter the exercise with all information already provided in advance. Instead, they had to make decisions based on information given in the field and on evolving circumstances. This closely resembles a real disaster scene. Disasters do not kindly announce their starting time, nor do they provide a neat table summarizing the number of patients, the type of hazardous material, and hospital capacity. For that reason, disaster education must intentionally include unpredictability.

Operation WOMBAT was not simply a game for the students. It was a device for testing their structure of thinking. Who should take command? What information should be confirmed first? Should responders approach patients before securing scene safety? Where should potentially contaminated patients be triaged? What information should be communicated to hospitals, and how? Students had to respond immediately to these questions. Using the Rapid Cycle Deliberate Practice method, Director Shin paused the students’ decision-making at key moments, provided immediate feedback, and allowed them to try again. Through this process, education became not the delivery of knowledge, but the training of operational thinking.

In the afternoon, a full-scale drill led by TUL faculty followed. This drill was a practical simulation that included scene safety, access control, triage, lifesaving procedures, casualty collection, communication, teamwork, and structured debriefing. The official TUL programme also presents high-fidelity emergency simulations, team-based scenario training, structured debriefings, practical use of rescue equipment, mass casualty incident training, digital simulation, an airport visit, and air rescue techniques training as major elements. In this setting, Director Shin observed the strengths of European-style education. The structure allowed students to move, take on roles, make mistakes, and discuss their actions again. He felt that for disaster medicine education in Korea to develop further, this kind of experiential, team-based, iterative feedback-oriented education must be strengthened even more.

Thursday, April 23, was a day when Director Shin’s personal and professional journey came together. In the afternoon, he delivered a keynote lecture at TUL titled “From Surviving to Building: How Boston Shaped My Mission in Disaster Medicine.” This lecture was not merely a reflection on his training experience in Boston. It was an opportunity to explain how he moved through a period of survival, built a disaster medicine education system in Korea, and eventually advanced toward international collaboration. The official TUL page also announced this lecture as a keynote by Heejun Shin, MD, MS, FIBODM.

On the same day, a panel discussion followed under the theme “Counter-Terrorism Medicine and Preparedness for Armed Conflict.” George Tataru, RN, Founding Director of Counter-Terrorism Medicine Europe, participated in the panel, and the discussion was moderated by PhDr. Zdeněk Jindříšek, FIBODM. This discussion had very important meaning for Director Shin. Disaster medicine no longer refers only to natural disasters or out-of-hospital mass-casualty response. Modern disaster medicine must address terrorism, armed conflict, CBRNe threats, attacks on hospitals, civilian protection, tactical medicine, and health security together. It was a moment when the direction of Tactical Counter-Terrorism Medicine, which Director Shin had long considered, met the European discussion on counter-terrorism medicine.

Another important aspect of this visit was people and relationships. This programme could not have been completed without the field coordination of Zdeněk Jindříšek, International Adjunct Faculty of the Tactical Medicine Division at the SCH Disaster Medicine Center and Lecturer Faculty at TUL; Ivana’s international cooperation and administrative support; the educational participation of Petr and Pavla; Jakub Kopecký’s hospital and field guidance; and the active engagement of many TUL faculty members and European students. Disaster medicine education is not built alone. Good education is not completed by the lecturer’s knowledge alone. An educational ecosystem is created only when there are people who open the field, gather students, design simulations, prepare equipment, and continue the discussion.

On April 24, as Director Shin left Prague, he felt that this visit was not merely the completion of a schedule, but the beginning of something new. CIREcourse, which began in Korea, had met European students in Liberec. Chemical disaster education had been connected to the practice-oriented educational structure of the BIP. Counter-terrorism medicine and preparedness for armed conflict had expanded into an international forum for discussion. This was not only a personal achievement. It was evidence of the possibility that Asia and Europe can learn from each other through disaster medicine education.

Ultimately, this TUL visit left the SCH Disaster Medicine Center with one clear conviction. The future of disaster medicine education does not exist only inside the lecture hall. It exists in hospitals and EMS fields, in simulations where students physically move and act, in unexpected tabletop exercises, and in educational cooperation across national borders. Above all, it exists in people who do not see disasters merely as events to be avoided, but who transform them into opportunities for learning, building better systems, and strengthening communities.