Nursing News:
Homefront workers kept things going

by BARBARA ROLEK
When Diane Doty went off to war, she left one critical job for another. Like many businesses across the region that lost vital resources when employees left for Operation Iraqi Freedom, St. Anthony Medical Center in Crown Point, Ind., had to figure out how to keep things running while Doty was gone. Some companies hired temporary employees and added hours to part-timers. But during Doty¹s 5-1/2 months overseas, four charge nurses at St. Anthony took up her duties as director of the hospital¹s four critical care units. ³When you talk about filling Diane¹s shoes, I filled a toe,² said Carol Budgin, the charge nurse of the cardiac intensive care unit. ³I did scheduling, staffing and evaluations for CICU.² Deb Itell assumed the leadership of the three other units ­ cardiac care, neurological care and neurological intensive care.
³It was tough doing Diane¹s job and my own, but we had planning sessions before she left and I stayed calm,² said Itell, who is happy to give back the baton and the 3 a.m. phone calls that went with it. Charge nurse Carol Hebda acted as the liaison between administration and staff, while patient care manager Lois Lopez was the link between patients and staff. ³We communicated via e-mail and more than a few times asked Diane for advice on how to handle a situation. ŒSorry to bother you while you¹re being shot at, butŠŒ³ Budgin said with a laugh. Doty, a major in the U.S. Air Force Reserve Nurse Corps, was activated in February out of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. Two weeks later, the 445th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron arrived at its base in England preparing to evacuate the wounded out of Kuwait.
A veteran of the Bosnian conflict in 1998, Doty said the access to e-mail so she could lend advice back home was just one of the differences she noticed in the Iraqi conflict. ³This time the patients were sicker, there was a higher volume of orthopedic injuries, shrapnel and gunshot wounds and there was a lot of asthma and pneumonia due to the desert sand,² Doty said. But state-of-the art equipment enabled them to do more procedures on the plane and move more patients than in the past, about 50 a day, 10 percent of them female, she said. As the plane¹s medical crew director, Doty was in charge of personnel that flew into Kuwait aboard a C-141 cargo plane to evacuate the wounded to hospitals throughout Europe.
Would she do it again? In a heartbeat, she said. ³I had no doubt I was where I was meant to be,² she said. ³When we got the call to put on our helmets, flak vests and guns, we joked to deal with the stress, but when the doors of the plane opened, we went into nurse mode and worked at warp speed.²
As a hospital administrator back on the job since Aug. 5, Doty pushes more paper than patients. ³In war or on the floor of a critical-care unit, it¹s a crisis situation and your adrenaline is pumping; we call it an ICU high and I miss that some days,² she said. One of her most heartbreaking recollections from the conflict was the story of a 35-year-old Army officer who stood in front of a hand grenade to protect his men when it exploded. ³He lost both his legs and was in danger of losing one of his arms. We moved him to Germany and he died the next day,² Doty said, tears filling her eyes. ³He sticks out in my mind, but there were many brave men and women like him. They were amazing, just amazing.²
Printed with permission of the NW Indiana Times.