Nurses Give Their Best to Those Injured in a Divisive War

I urge all of you to find a copy of the American Journal of Nursing (May 2008), turn to page 7 and read the editorial by the journal’s editor-in-chief, Diana Mason, RN, Ph.D., FAAN. There is a great deal of wisdom and thought-provoking information on that one page of print.

The editorial carries the innocuous title, "Anniversaries," yet its subject stirs strong emotion. The title refers to the 100th anniversary of the Navy Nurse Corps and the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq. Mason deftly intertwines aspects of each to present a concise and subtly powerful piece about the far-reaching effects of the Iraq conflict on Iraqi citizens, the loss of American lives and the emotional toll on military nurses who care for injured American servicemen and women.

Mason, an Army Nurse Corps veteran, puts forth harsh statistics of the devastation the war has wrought on the Iraqi people—statistics we’d rather not hear. In March, Los Angeles Times reporter Marjorie Mills described the war as "a story that people want to go away." It is so much easier and painless to ignore the war and its ramifications than to deal with tragic truths.

Just this week the news services carried a dramatic photo of a group of bicycle racers being struck from behind by a car with a drunk driver at the wheel. The photo was a freeze-frame of many Lycra-clad bodies and bicycles impossibly high in mid-air, a crash that claimed one life and resulted in many injuries. I sent a link to the photo, along with my comment that I was outraged by the incident, to a number of people who, like my husband, are bicycle racers.

My outrage hit a nerve with one of my cyclist friends, who passionately let me know that my outrage was misdirected. He wondered why I wasn’t outraged by the war, why news services release images of significantly less consequential incidents when they should be exposing the dire repercussions of the war. That is a can of worms I probably shouldn’t and won’t try to sort out here. But, it certainly does seem that the longer the war goes on and the worse the news becomes, the more John Q. Public seeks the anesthesia of fluff news. As inane and irritating as the latest escapade of Paris Hilton might be, it is infinitely less wrenching than the reality of war.

In her editorial Mason honors the dedication of military and VA nurses to saving and restoring the lives of injured American service members. Theirs is a nursing job like no other. Seeing and treating injuries so horrific they defy imagination, bolstering families who know their lives have been forever altered, listening to shockingly dreadful stories of the war zone brought back by the injured soldiers—all of it puts the nurses at risk for secondary post-traumatic stress disorder. Yet, whether or not they support this war, they endure and persevere because they know their patients are entitled to the best care they can give.

In addition to the military men and women who have lost their lives in this controversial conflict, the returning injured and the nurses who care for them are my heroes. And, my thanks to Diana Mason for opening my eyes to a much bigger and more profound picture of the war than I had realized existed.