Enroute Care Nursing at TQ

Flag Gazer recommends the most excellent blog Me Over There from LT Peter DeYoung, a Navy nurse with the Al Taqaddum Surgical Detachment, 2nd Maintenance Battalion, 2nd Marine Logistics Group (Forward), known as TQ Surgical.

Here's something he's put together about enroute care nursing.

AL TAQADDUM, Iraq (April 19, 2007) These guardians are called en-route care nurses and fly onboard casualty evacuation helicopters to stabilize and monitor patients being transferred to a larger treatment facility.

When Operation Iraqi Freedom first started, patients were often accompanied by a hospital corpsman, or no caretaker at all. Medical professionals in Iraq knew there had to be a change.

Lieutenant Cmdr. Troy L. King, an enroute care nurse with Al Taqaddum Surgical Detachment, 2nd Maintenance Battalion, 2nd Marine Logistics Group (Forward), was one of the ground level participants when nurses began jumping aboard with flight crews.

In 2004, medical personnel realized that in-flight patients were not receiving the same quality of care that they would at established facilities, according to King.

“So they started flying nurses with them,” he said.

The nurses who initially began flying were, and even to this day are, volunteers. They volunteer to fly with patients without the extra flight pay and flight status other aircraft crewmembers receive.

I spotted a Soldiers' Angels coffee mug in Peter's latest slideshow called TQ Surgical at Work and Play. Damn, those things are everywhere...