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Dr. Doherty is Professor, Department of Nursing, Western Connecticut State University, Danbury, Connecticut; and Dr. Scannell-Desch is Director of Undergraduate and Graduate Programs, Hudson Valley Campus, Adelphi University, Poughkeepsie, New York.
The authors have disclosed no potential conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise. The study was partially funded by a research grant from the Connecticut State University System through Western Connecticut State University.
Following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the United States and its coalition allies deployed military personnel to Afghanistan to combat Taliban and Al Qaeda forces. In 2003, the United States started deploying medical personnel in Kandahar and Bagram, Afghanistan. As the United States prepared to invade Iraq in 2003, the first cohort of military nurses deployed to staging areas in Kuwait. When the order came to invade Iraq in March 2003, nurses assigned to forward surgical teams and mobile hospitals followed the move of ground troops into Iraq. Hours later, coalition casualties began arriving at triage stations, operating rooms, and hastily established morgues (Ruff & Roper, 2005). The purpose of the current study was to describe the reintegration experience of U.S. military nurses following return from Iraq or Afghanistan (2003-2013), including reintegration after single and multiple deployments (including deployment to both Iraq and Afghanistan).
Background
Over the past 11 years, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have generated a dramatic escalation in deployments for U.S. forces, including military nurses. When compared to other Veterans of these wars, little has been documented about U.S. military nurses. Several accounts have reported nurses' experiences (Germain & Lounsbury, 2007; Richie-Melvan & Vines, 2010; Ruff & Roper, 2005), but much of their reintegration experiences have gone untold.
The current study was born out of findings of previous studies examining the lived experience of military nurses in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (Scannell-Desch & Doherty, 2010), women nurses' health and hygiene experiences while deployed (Doherty & Scannell-Desch, 2012), and deployed nurse-parents experiences (Scannell-Desch & Doherty, 2013). The previous studies, using different sample cohorts from the current study, led the investigators to wonder how military nurses would describe their reintegration to work, family, and community. Would they use mental health services after returning from war? What would they describe as challenges, triumphs, and disappointments after returning from war?...