FORT SILL, Okla. (Feb. 5, 2015) -- The Army Nurse Corps celebrated its 114th anniversary, Feb. 2. The presentation and cake cutting ceremony honored the men and women who have served in the corps throughout history.
Maj. Melody Voskuil, officer in charge of obstetrics and gynecology, or OB-GYN, at Reynolds Army Community Hospital, or RACH, joined the nurse corps in 1999. Over the past 18 years, she experienced the progressive evolution of the corps and its mission.
"I didn't get [an] orientation," Voskuil said. "I started in a 42-bed surgical floor at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany. It was great, kind of in-the-face training, you definitely become independent quickly with the Army. I was a charge nurse within about six weeks and that was extremely frightening."
The Army saw a high rate of burnout occurring in the nursing field. Also, many commanders sent their nurses back to the states from deployment because they lacked a lot of the necessary skills needed to complete the mission.
"The Army adopted the orientation program," said 1st Lt. Macy Marshall, charge nurse OB-GYN. "So that first six months, I had someone with me at all times learning how to give meds, injections, do nursing treatments and rotating to some other departments in the hospital to get a taste of other units. I wasn't a charge nurse until about a year and a half after that. They really slowed it down. New nurses in the Army are not deployable for one year; you need to get those skills."
The progression of the Army Nurse Corps throughout the years can be seen looking back through the corps' history.
"You look at where we're at today and where we've gotten to, the surgeon general of the Army is a nurse corps officer," said Col. Noel Cárdenas, RACH commander. "Our regional commander, Gen. [Barbara] Holcomb is a nurse corps officer. You also look at Gen. [Jimmie] Keenan, who was our previous regional commander and now the deputy commander for operations. Where we are now, at having three nurse corps general officers, I can tell you that 10 years ago I don't think anybody would have ever though that would happen."
The history of nurses began as hired help, Cárdenas said, but it became a calling. Nurses filled a need in the Army and provided a level of care that brought compassion to the field of medicine.
"Look at where you started from, go back to the war of independence and realizing we needed nurses then," Cárdenas said. "That's when that call of action and call to the nurses began. They were in our country and amongst our communities back then."
At RACH, nurses take on many different roles and support every aspect of health care. They work tirelessly to provide each patient an individual level of care and fill many roles within their designated units.
"I still work the floor, which I've been doing the past two days," said Capt. Heather Barton, clinical nurse officer in charge of 2-West at RACH. "When we have a high patient census then I'll go out and work just as a normal nurse, but on any other day I'm doing the managerial aspect of it. Planning meetings, information meetings, those are what I go to. Then I bring it back to the rest of the staff."
As an inpatient unit, 2-West provides care to a variety of patients who have to spend an extended period at RACH. Barton has been a nurse for over seven years, specializing in the medical surgical field. She makes sure that the floor is running smoothly, typically working a 12-hour shift at the hospital as well as being on-call 24 hours a day.
"I go to a lot of meetings to help support the clinical function. I fight for whatever we may need," Voskuil said. "I support the HR [human resources] function, the supply function, the pay roll, and whatever this floor might need for standard operating procedures and ensuring everyone is competent. I have a lot of hats."
Voskuil also works with Reynolds functions such as the lab and pharmacy. The nurses in OB-GYN strive to be a part of the team and integrate OB-GYN with RACH to provide their patients with the best possible care and to help bridge the gap between patients and doctors.
"When you see the quotes that say, 'it takes a special person to be a nurse' it's no joke," Marshall said. "For nursing it does take a very special person."
"We're not cookie cutter either," Voskuil said. Some folks are wonderful administrators, while others are really good at the bedside, she explained. There are also those folks who are really good at balancing both, but everything is a team effort and they learn each others strengths and weaknesses to help one another excel.
"I've met a couple of my colleagues again, it's really rewarding," Voskuil said. "You can almost read each others mind when you're working that closely together for a year or two, or less, because you're in such crucial situations. For me that's the most rewarding, working with those teams. There's people that I would trust them with everything in my life, because I know they care so much about that patient and not only that patient, but their team members."
Every day, nurses touch patients lives and provide an unequivocal level of caring.
"When I first started nursing, I was on a telemetry floor in Hawaii. I was taking care of a patient who was having pseudo-seizures, an older gentleman," Marshall said. "He transferred to a rehab center where he started making a recovery but returned to the hospital a while later really sick again. We transferred him again to a rehab facility.
"Then, I think a year-and-a-half later, he recognized me. He was in the hospital volunteering at the flower shop and recognized me in the hallway, came over to me and gave me a big hug. To see him a year-and-a-half later, independent and able to take care of himself, it was just a great thing. You see someone at their worst but then when they come back in to the hospital and they are at their best, it's just an amazing feeling knowing you helped them get there."
Patient care is only one rewarding aspect for Army nurses. The other opportunities for learning, travel, experiencing the world and its people are something a civilian nurse might not get, Barton said.
"You get to meet a lot of interesting people, do a lot of interesting things and travel," Barton said. "You get to kind of experience both sides, the nursing realm and then the field aspects of it too. The environments you're put in, the stress levels you're put under, the MASCALS [mass casualty exercises] that you experience, you wouldn't get that being a civilian nurse."
Over the last 100 years, the Army Nurse Corps has evolved into an integral part of the Army. From their beginning as "hired help" to holding some of the highest ranking positions in the Army, nurses support every aspect of not only the medical field, but of the Army.
"Without nurses, who truly is going to provide that health care for our patients?" Cárdenas said. "The physicians provide their part, we've got medics, but it's the nurses who provide that special treatment, that compassionate care. Not to say our medics don't do that, not to say our physicians don't do that, but there's just something about a nurse."
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