FH-3: 'Ground Zero for Nation Building'
Navy Newsstand
Story Number: NNS030523-03
Release Date: 5/23/2003 10:11:00 AM
By Rod Duren, Public Affairs Officer, NH Pensacola, Fla.
PENSACOLA, Fla. (NNS) -- Lieutenant Dallas Braham, a Navy Nurse and reservist who was recalled to active duty in February from his day charge nurse duties at Tulane University Hospital in New Orleans, has spent the past 11 weeks as part of Navy Medicine's historical Fleet Hospital 3 (FH-3).
FH-3 became the first Navy medical command to construct and establish an Expeditionary Medical Facility (EMF) in a combat zone April 1 in southern Iraq.
The 116-bed EMF covers nine acres and is manned by more than 300 medical service support personnel from Navy medical facilities at Bethesda, Md.; Corpus Christi, Texas; Great Lakes, Ill.; Pensacola, Fla.; and Portsmouth, Va; plus Seabees from Key West, Fla.; and Kings Bay, Ga.
Lt. Braham hadn't given much thought to the "historical" aspects of being the first EMF in a combat zone or the "austere (living and working) conditions we were in and level of care we provided," he said recently as the command prepared to complete its duties in southern Iraq as a combat field hospital.
"Until then, we simply had a task to perform and we have done it extraordinarily well," said Braham,the Naval Hospital Pensacola ICU nurse. "We have shown that several aspects of Navy Medicine can meld together to be the immediate support for the 'pointy end of the spear'."
"We are not warriors," Braham continued, "but through our care, we have provided tactical support and have been, as one of my close friends said,'ground zero for nation building'."
FH-3, through the trust it has built among the citizenry, has saved many lives outside the hospital and "some (patients' lives and outlooks) within the hospital have even begun to be rebuilt," said Braham, who was commissioned a Navy Nurse in 1999 after serving years in the Naval Air Reserve in New Orleans.
"Our success here will change the course of Naval Medicine in the field," said Braham, the 40-year-old Navy nurse.
The commanding officer of FH-3 agreed wholeheartedly. "Bottom line, this has been a shining example of the definition of teamwork," added Captain Peter F. O'Connor. "I've said it before to our families, this is the best fleet hospital in the Navy and I'm proud to be a part of it."
In describing one of the more moving experiences while being a part of FH-3, Braham, the father of three young children, said the most difficult aspect of the deployment has been caring for the wounded children.
"It was tough on me," said Braham. "I spent several hours one night caring for a young girl who had received a gunshot wound to the head, reportedly from celebratory gun fire near the city of Basra soon after the liberation of that area began."
"Through an interpreter, I spent much of that time conversing with her father as I hovered over his daughter. We spoke of our families and how protective we were of our daughters," said Braham, who missed the birth of his third child while deployed.
"Through him, I think I got my greatest affirmation of our purpose to care for their wounds and for our forces to liberate these good people from the tyrant that has ruled over them," Braham concluded.
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