Nursing In The Military: An Interview

For this piece, I decided to interview a close friend named Jasmine that served as an active-duty member of the US military as a nurse. I decided to interview her about her nursing career because I thought it might be interesting to have a bit of a departure from Hackernoon’s usual tech-focused content. We’ll be talking about her training in the military, how long she was enlisted, what brought her to the military, and what her service was like.

Choosing Her Career:

Me: Can you tell me about your nursing education and experience?

Jasmine: I received my nursing education at the Academy in Fort Sam Houston, where I was a member of unit 91 Whiskey. I served for three years in the 1990s.

Me: Why did you choose nursing as a career?

Jasmine: Nursing ended up being both an escape from an abusive family and something that fell into my lap. At the time I had a child to think about taking care of, and I was living at home in my mother’s house and it wasn’t a safe environment for me, let alone my son. So I decided to enlist in the military and take the ASVAB. I scored decently well and got two options to choose from for my MOS. MOS stands for Military Occupational Specialty.

How To Function On The Job:

Me: How do you handle challenging patients or difficult situations?

Jasmine: The best approach is to try and calm your patients down by trying to talk to them and relate to them, or at the very least show them you care. If my efforts are unsuccessful, I transfer them to someone who is better equipped to handle their condition. The thing about it is the definition of a challenging patient can vary, but for me, the most challenging patients have mainly been elderly and disabled veterans. Challenging situations are a little more tricky because every situation is unique, but there is a guidebook of standard operating procedure for a reason. Follow what the guidebook says and the instructions of your commanding officer and you hopefully will be fine.

Me: Can you describe a time when you had to make a difficult ethical decision in your practice?

Jasmine: Unfortunately I can. Without giving out too much detail, there was an incident where a commanding officer was married to a female subordinate of his, and he had a pornography addiction. He believed that he could try and do the same things to his partner in real life that he saw in pornography, and unfortunately some of the things he did hurt her, and I had a decision to make. Report him for his conduct and likely get her in trouble and have her children taken away from her because spousal abuse is very serious in the military. Or I could be silent and know the abuse was still happening, but also know that she’d still have her kids.

Me: How did you prioritize and manage your workload on a daily basis?

Jasmine: In the military, prioritization and workload management were not done by me. I was told what to do, where to go, and when to be there. Soldiering was the first priority, and nursing was secondary. As a member of the military I followed orders and did what I was told, when I was told. I had no control over my workload.

Me: How do you keep up with changes in medical technology and advancements in patient care?

Jasmine: To stay updated, I attended seminars and went to specific schooling programs. Thankfully everything was paid for fully by the military, so it was like I got an education for free! I can’t comment on what it’s like being a civilian and needing to keep up with trends, I only worked as a nurse while in the military.

Me: Can you tell me about a successful project or initiative you led in your previous role?

Jasmine: "One successful initiative I led was the ability to wear braids. I am a black woman and my hair is part of my cultural identity. My commanding officer asked me to cut my hair because he deemed it “unprofessional” for a woman to have her hair in braids. I refused and decided to take the issue up the chain of command until I received permission to wear my hair in its natural ethnic style."

The Importance of Communication Skills:

Me: How do you communicate with other healthcare professionals, such as doctors and administrators, to ensure the best patient care?

Jasmine: To ensure patient care I communicate directly with the doctor. In the military, the doctor's opinion usually outweighs mine because they’re a higher rank than me. Doctors in the military are usually at colonel rank or higher. So I pull the doctor aside to discuss patient care. Sometimes the doctor is willing to listen and push changes through.

Me: How do you handle conflicts or misunderstandings with coworkers or supervisors?

Jasmine: I didn’t. I learned to keep things to myself and move on, because the people who would give me problems were people of a higher rank than me. And when it came to them being higher in rank, there was nothing I could do. So I just kept my head down, kept my mouth shut, and did my job. I couldn’t risk jeopardizing my career.

Me: What do you do when you don't know an answer to a patient's question or how to address a situation?

Jasmine: I tell the truth. When it comes to someone’s health, you can’t pretend that you know everything when you actually don’t. So I tell the patient that I don’t have the answer to their specific question and point them in the direction of someone that does.

How To Make An Impact In Patients lives:

Me: How do you ensure that all of your patients receive individualized, compassionate care?

Jasmine: I do my best to provide for each patient in the time that I’m assigned to them. I cannot guarantee that other healthcare professionals will provide the same level of care that I would.

Me: How do you explain medications, treatments, or healthcare situations without using a lot of medical or healthcare jargon?

Jasmine: That process is actually kind of automated. We go in with the expectation that our patients won’t have much medical knowledge, especially not specialized medical knowledge. So what we do is we give a printout sheet of information that’s written in an easily understandable way so that people without medical knowledge can understand what they need to do to take care of themselves, and what they’re putting into their bodies.

Me: What do you think are the most important qualities of a successful nurse?

Jasmine: Patience and discretion are the two most important qualities. Nurses can get burnt out extremely quickly because as a nurse you deal with problematic people on a regular basis. Some people choose to be problematic and go out of their way to do so. Other people don’t intend to be problematic, but unfortunately are because of their circumstances. As a nurse, it’s your job to use your judgment to distinguish between the two. Some people genuinely need help, some people just want to cause a problem. It’s tough to tell which is which, but it’s necessary.

Nursing Challenges:

Me: What do you think are the biggest challenges facing nurses today?

Jasmine: The pay and the hours are the biggest challenges. The pay is horrible. It’s almost impossible to sustain yourself, let alone a family on a nurse’s salary. And the hours are even worse than the pay because they’re extremely long shifts. Twelve and twenty four hour long shifts are the norm, not the exception to the rule in the medical field. And the dehumanization that you’re treated with at times can be so extreme that it makes you question whether or not you even want to continue nursing.

Me: Thank you so much for sharing your insight into nursing and your stories.

Jasmine: Thank you for giving me a chance to tell my story.

Final Thoughts:

Getting to hear someone’s story is an opportunity to see the world through their eyes. We each have a unique path through life. Jasmine grew up in an abusive home and wanted a better life not just for herself, but for her son, so she chose to enlist in the military to try and get away from the abuse she was dealing with and to be able to provide for her little boy. The path she chose was difficult and full of trials and tribulations because the military is a job like any other with politics that have to be navigated. But for Jasmine it was an experience that gave her the opportunity to do something meaningful with her life and make a difference in the lives of others, and to her, that was worth the effort.

The lead image for this article was generated by HackerNoon's AI Image Generator via the prompt "military hospital".