Navy nurse veteran carries lessons into SWFL delivery room | Opinion

Years ago, I was the U.S. Navy's critical care nurse aboard the USS Boxer, an amphibious assault ship carrying Marines.

Deployment to the Horn of Africa took our vessel into sticky situations, and we treated a wide range of injuries, illnesses and trauma patients in active combat zones. On other deployments, we sailed to Latin America, delivering humanitarian procedures to civilians. Veterans Day honors the millions of Americans who carry military service experiences like these out of uniform and into civilian life.

Today I'm a certified registered nurse anesthetist (CRNA) on the obstetric anesthesia team with U.S. Anesthesia Partners of Florida in Fort Myers, caring for mothers at two area hospitals. A lot of what I do there traces back to 21 years in uniform.

I grew up a coal miner's daughter in Pennsylvania. An asthmatic kid, I spent plenty of time in doctors' offices. I liked what I saw. At 18 I enlisted as a Navy hospital corpsman, to help people and to see a world bigger than my small town.

The Navy delivered. I volunteered for Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, during the Haitian refugee crisis and stayed nine months, building camps that kept growing as more people fled. Then came four years in Okinawa, Japan, where I trained as an orthopedic technician and surgical assistant. In the operating room there, I watched the person at the head of the table. The anesthesia provider tracked the patient, the room and every small cue. Patients trusted that person to put them to sleep and wake them up again. I wanted that job.

After roughly a decade as a corpsman, I left the Navy, went to nursing school and worked in an intensive care unit. Then I came back as an officer. I had left something unfinished. Aboard the Boxer, on a humanitarian mission along the coast of Latin America, I flew ashore to collect patients who needed hernia repairs, cleft lip surgery and other care they couldn't get at home. By day's end, everyone went home to family. In nine months as a critical care and flight nurse, I flew more than 50 missions moving critically ill and injured patients.

After anesthesia school, I finished my military career in San Diego as Chief of Regional Anesthesia, training residents and anesthesia students and running the schedule for more than 100 providers. I retired in 2017 and entered civilian practice.

Three lessons from those years shape every shift I work now.

First, stay calm and commit. Conditions change fast on a warship and in a delivery room. You read the situation, make the call and act on it.

Second, nobody works alone. The Navy drilled into me that the mission depends on the team. During an emergency cesarean, I talk constantly with the obstetricians on the other side of the drape. I'm never too proud to call for help.

Third, find a way to connect. Overseas, I cared for patients who were on both sides of conflicts. Some didn't speak English. Hand signals worked. So did a few words of their language. Everybody is human.

That last lesson matters most to a mother in labor. I often get only a few minutes with a patient before a procedure. I use them. I introduce myself and find one thing we share, maybe something I overheard her telling her nurse. I tell her I'll care for her as I would my own family. Then I listen.

When a delivery turns complicated, the room fills with people talking to each other. A mother can feel lost in the middle of it. So I keep talking to her. Here's what's happening. You're doing great. Do you need anything? She is the center of that room, and I want her to know it.

Then the baby arrives, and I get to say happy birthday. Best part of the job.

Lee County is home to about 52,000 veterans, more than 13,000 of whom served since the Gulf War era. You pass us every day. Some of us are in the operating room when your daughter gives birth.

The Navy taught me resilience, teamwork and compassion. This Veterans Day, and every day, I'm proud to carry those lessons into a delivery room in Fort Myers.

Julie Spring, CRNA, is a member of the obstetric anesthesia team at U.S. Anesthesia Partners of Florida in Fort Myers. She served 21 years in the U.S. Navy as a hospital corpsman and Nurse Corps officer and lives in Cape Coral.

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Navy nurse veteran carries lessons into SWFL delivery room | Opinion