Blanchfield celebrates 115 years of Army Nurse Corps

By Heather HuberFebruary 12, 2016

Celebrating 115 years of Army Nurse Corps
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Celebrating 115 years of Army Nurse Corps
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Celebrating 115 years of Army Nurse Corps
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Celebrating 115 years of Army Nurse Corps
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Celebrating 115 years of Army Nurse Corps
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FORT CAMPBELL, KY. -- Since the Revolutionary War, nurses have treated American Soldiers throughout our nation's conflicts, but it was not until 1901 that the Army Nurse Corps officially came into being.

Blanchfield Army Community Hospital nurses gathered Feb. 2, to celebrate the Corps 115th anniversary. To commemorate the occasion, Deputy Commander for Nursing Col. Julie Lomax and her husband, retired Col. Steve Lomax, spoke about their experiences in the Nurse Corps, focusing on this year's theme, "Leading from where you are."

"This year's theme for the Army Nurse Corps, 'Leading from where you are,' asks us to see ourselves as leaders no matter our rank, our position, our time given to patients," Julie Lomax said. "Every nurse, no matter if they're a staff nurse, a unit nurse, a clinical nurse specialist, a nurse case manager or assigned to any other role, needs to understand these responsibilities. The transition to the Nurse Corps from the 24th to the 25th Command at the end of 2015 ushered in a renewed vision for the direction of the Corps."

She said the most important parts of any team are the people on it.

"Succeeding in growth and developing our officers as well as leaders is vitally important in avoiding future leadership hardships," Lomax said. "This will enable the Nurse Corps to adapt to the needs of the transformational Army."

She said most nurse second lieutenants are new to both the Army and the Nurse Corps, so most do not think of themselves as leaders despite all that is asked of them.

"Nurses lead care teams, they manage time, resources, make decisions and lead patients and Family members through the often complicated and taxing care experience," Lomax said. "If our officers define themselves as leaders early in their careers and approach each new position as a leadership opportunity, they will grow not only as nursing professionals but as Soldiers and officers in the United States Army."

Steven Lomax said he met his wife when he took over as Assistant Chief of Nursing Services, 42nd Field Hospital, while she was still just a second lieutenant. About a week after his appointment, the hospital deployed to Mogadishu, Somalia.

"My duty as assistant chief was to pull the nurses together who were going to be a part of this," Steven Lomax said. "I didn't know a lot of the nurses, but I made my selection of the nurses that were on the deployable status. One was Julie."

Lomax, who was an OB nurse at the time, argued that she had no place in Somalia, but Steven Lomax reassigned her to medical-surgical. He said a short time after they arrived, the situation began to deteriorate.

"One night, probably around 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, we were taking a great deal of fire and the sirens went off that the enemy was within the compound," Steven Lomax said.

As he made his way to the nursing care tents, he tried to calm himself and figure out how he was going to calm his staff.

"I got there -- Julie and another lieutenant had taken charge of that medical surgical area," Steven Lomax said. "They'd taken the sick and the injured off their racks so they wouldn't be hit by fire. They were moving around with their little red flashlights comforting them. Julie was standing over by an enemy combatant telling him he better not move, and he believed her. That was leadership."

He said he had been impressed by Lomax and the other nurses that night, because they stepped up without having to be told what to do. "She didn't say, 'I was a junior officer and I can't step up right now.' She didn't say, 'Well I haven't been here long enough,'" Steven Lomax said. "She said, 'This is what I need to do. I need to take care of these guys.'"

He said it is easy to blame lack of rank, age and experience for a lack of leadership skills, but the Army Nurse Corps is aiming to teach its members how to build their skills over time rather than simply expecting skills to come with each promotion.

"All those are easy things to say to ourselves to kind of give us a way out, but nursing itself and more specifically Army nursing has a long history of nurse-leaders stepping up in the very worst of times," Steven Lomax said.

After Steven Lomax finished his speech, everyone was invited to participate in a blessing of the hands, a ceremony that honors nurses for their compassion and care for others and reaffirms their commitment to nursing.

The ceremony closed with Blanchfield's most senior and most junior Army nurses, Lt. Col. Patricia Davis and Pfc. Robbie Brockman, cutting the cake together.

In addition to the celebration Tuesday, retired and active-duty nurses and their Families gathered Saturday to participate in a pottery painting event to benefit the Empty Bowls Project, a charity that helps feed those in need. The event featured 1950s themed music and food, as well as a 1950s-era Red Cross vehicle from Fort Campbell's Don F. Pratt Museum.

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