his webinar presents 4 qualitative research studies describing the wartime deployment experiences & the reintegration of military nurses after returning from the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. The studies describe the personal and professional challenges the nurses faced, the difficulties they endured, the dangers they overcame, and the consequences they grappled with from deployment to war and through return from the war zones. In mobile surgical field hospitals, fast-forward mobile care units, detainee care facilities, base and city hospitals, aeromedical evacuation aircraft, and aeromedical staging units, these nurses cared for their patients with compassion, acumen, and inventiveness. When they returned home, they dealt with their experiences as best they could. The first 3 of 4 studies describe the lived experiences of living and working in a war zone. Some of the themes exposed the challenges of parental separation, primitive living conditions, children caught in the chaos of war, environmental stressors, female health and hygiene deficiencies, and the stress of caring for severely injured coalition soldiers and detainees. The fourth study describes Homecoming and Reintegration for active duty, National Guard, and Reserve forces nurses deployed in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.

Speakers:

Elizabeth Scannell-Desch, PhD, RN, FAAN Colonel, United States Air Force, Nurse Corps (retired) Associate Dean & Professor, Rutgers University, School of Nursing, Camden, NJ (retired)

Mary Ellen Doherty, PhD, RN, CNM, FACNM Professor Emerita, Western Connecticut State University, Danbury, CT