Final authority
On board, the medical crew director — a flight nurse — is the final medical authority. It’s up to the nurse to “make medical decisions on the spot,” Odom said. There’s no staff of doctors to turn to at 24,000 feet. Only if a call is “outside your scope,” she said, “do you get on the radio and call a doctor on the ground.”
It’s a huge responsibility, she said. Few nurses in military or civilian hospitals do that.
At Incirlik, Capt. Michelle Maybell makes other types of decisions. She’s a crew manager and has a different focus. Instead of patients, the senior flight nurse takes care of fellow medics.
“We have a group that takes care of all the needs crews have so they can keep their mind on their mission,” the critical care nurse said. “They have to think about their patients. Not about getting equipment and medicine, or how they’re going to get back to their rooms.”
A reservist with the 315th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron at Charleston Air Force Base, S.C., Maybell deployed to Incirlik shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. A volunteer, she joined the 43rd Expeditionary Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron.
As a crew manager, she learns one more part of a flight nurse’s job. It’s a responsibility she doesn’t have in her civilian job as trauma nurse coordinator, but one that will help her do that job better. And though she’d rather be flying, what she does is a “feel good” job.
“When I alert crews, pack them up, launch them, and go back to help them unpack after a mission, it gives me a good feeling,” she said. “A sense of accomplishment.”
When the soldiers Thomas put on the Talon at Bagram were ready to fly from Incirlik to Ramstein, it was Maybell who got the medics ready to fly with them.
“I know we did our part to make that mission a success,” she said.
It’s about caring
While Europe, the Middle East and Asia Minor are where the action is these days, flight nurses serve around the world. Their job — and that of active duty, Reserve and Guard flight surgeons, aeromedical technicians and flight crews — is to provide patients expert care in the air while en route to a hospital.
That’s part of providing service members, Defense Department civilians and their families the level of care Americans expect, Lt. Col. Kirk Nailling said. The 86th’s director of operations and chief nurse, he said nurses play a key role in that process.
“We have plenty of people on the ground around the world who can do on-the-spot life-saving procedures,” he said. “But then it’s our job to get them to more definite care.”
Operation Enduring Freedom is proving that. Each one of the American troops hurt in the fighting in Afghanistan has had a nurse at his side on the plane ride to the hospital.
At times like that, nurses and medics bond. That was the case on the first evacuation from Incirlik to Ramstein of troops wounded in Afghanistan, Capt. Brenda Parker said. Another Ramstein flight nurse, she was the medical crew director on that flight.
“It was camaraderie, cohesiveness and communication at its best,” she said. “I’ve never seen such teamwork.”
A team effort. That’s what it takes to provide top-notch care, Nailling said. And that first-class care is something flight nurses hope to provide each time they take to the air. That, he said, “is what makes being a flight nurse so rewarding.”
Thomas emerged from the tiny cubbyhole of a room where he and another nurse called home. It was in the dimly lit and dank cellar of Bagram’s Soviet-built control tower. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes because in a few minutes more wounded were arriving.
He met all the wounded. It was the only way he could see first hand how badly they were hurt. That was the first step in figuring out what kind of an evacuation to coordinate. And as doctors treated or patched up the wounded, Thomas found a way to get them out of Bagram.
His reward was seeing the wounded leave the base, headed for a hospital and then home. To him, that alone was thanks enough for doing a job few — if any — people know about.
“These guys put their lives on the line for us,” he said. “Serving them is a thrill. And taking six months out of my life to do that is a small enough sacrifice in comparison to what they do.”
Above Article Courtesy of Airman Magazine
