A Salute to Combat Nurses: You Go, Girls and Guys

We all remember Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan from the popular television series M.A.S.H.

Sometimes ditzy in the social arena, she was a highly skilled and knowledgeable nurse when it came to performing in the battlefield OR during the Korean War. She and the surgeons sometimes had to operate under perilous conditions, and while the show was a sit com, it made some strong points about the morality of war and the sacrifices these M.A.S.H. surgical teams had to make.

Military nurses of every age and time deserve a lot of credit and recognition, especially in today’s theaters of war. I’ve known and interviewed a few of these nurses, and read about others in books and in their blogs and emails. The work combat nurses do and the things they experience are unlike anything most nurses will ever know. Those who work near the battlefield are often asked to do the impossible.

The experience of one nurse working in Afghanistan was recently chronicled on a Web site for nurses. Army Capt. Michelle A. Racicot, RN, who is currently stationed in September at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, wrote about her experiences:

“I had an interesting moment one day when I was filling out an application for a master’s degree program,” she wrote. “One question asked, ‘Briefly describe your experience working with cultures other than your own.’ Before I could type my response, I was asked to fly with the medevac team to evaluate three pediatric patients hit with shrapnel from a rocket propelled grenade.

“We flew to a remote FOB (forward operating base),” she continued, “and I was greeted by one of the Polish medics who attended my classes. One of the children had an eviscerated bowel and was having shortness of breath and nausea. While I was covering his wounds and drawing up medication to give him, he would not let me let go of his hand. I later learned that he did not survive.

“It was a reminder that even with all we can offer with medicine and surgery, sometimes it isn’t enough.”

Pretty heart-wrenching stuff and something that will no doubt remain with Racicot for a long time – if not forever.

Not all nurses are reactive; some are proactive.

Take Col. Susz Clark, RN, the second-in-command of the Army Nurse Corps and the former top Army nurse in Iraq, recognizes that medical care in the field needs revamping.

Currently, members of combat care teams first meet after they are deployed to the combat zone. Clark thinks this should change. She calls for “small, interdependent groups of professionals” whose members would work and train together regularly from the beginning of their careers. She believes doing it this way would create fast and adaptable teams that are highly proficient and ready to roll the minute they arrive in the combat zone.

“In a counterinsurgency environment, such as Iraq or Afghanistan, medical care must occur ‘curbside to combat,’ ” Clark told a reporter.

Seems totally sensible and obvious, but it took a nurse to see it.