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NAVHOSP Bremerton Staff Heading to Kuwait

Navy NewsStand

Story Number: NNS050901-18
Release Date: 9/1/2005 4:58:00 PM

By Journalist 2nd Class Fletcher Gibson, Naval Hospital Bremerton Public Affairs

BREMERTON, Wash. (NNS) -- Officers, hospital corpsmen, dental technicians and support staff from Naval Hospital Bremerton will move a little closer to the action Sept. 4 when a portion of its staff departs on a six-month deployment to Kuwait to provide direct medical support for combat operations in Iraq.

The 72 personnel will take their turn staffing the expeditionary medical facility U.S. Military Hospital Kuwait and its several medical clinics located throughout Kuwait.

“These 72 people are ready to go,” said Capt. Mark Boman, Naval Hospital Bremerton executive officer and commanding officer of Fleet Hospital Bremerton. “They’re trained, they’re motivated, and there is no doubt in my mind they’ll do a great job.”

The Kuwait location will allow the deploying doctors, nurses, dental technicians and hospital corpsmen to treat injured Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines from the Iraqi area of operations. They will also screen and treat service members assigned and traveling to and from Iraq via Kuwait.

Boman emphasized that the deploying personnel will be near enough to the war to help the combatants, yet far enough away to avoid combat hostilities in Iraq.

Naval Hospital Bremerton and its clinics at Naval Base Kitsap, Bangor; Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Naval Station Everett continue to keep 10-15 hospital corpsmen and nurses deployed to Iraq at any given time. However, the deployment to Kuwait is the largest since Fleet Hospital Bremerton deployed more than 300 people to Rota, Spain, in 2003.

Approximately 350 personnel will staff U.S. Military Hospital Kuwait. However, consistent with the Navy Surgeon General’s “Lego Block” approach to expeditionary hospital staffing, Boman said 72 will come from Bremerton while the remaining will come from 15 other naval hospital sites.

The command has already taken steps to reduce the impact on the Naval Hospital and its patients. Reservists and hired contractors will be assigned to Naval Hospital Bremerton to fill in for some of the deploying Sailors.

Preparations for this deployment have been ongoing, as members of Naval Hospital Bremerton routinely train for such deployments. The largest recent training exercise was in February at Camp Pendleton in southern California.

Additional training will take place at Camp Pendleton during the first days of the deployment as deploying personnel from participating naval hospitals and clinics join up there before heading out to Kuwait.

A pre-deployment brief was held Aug. 8 for the deploying service members and their families. Experts were on hand to help the family members recognize and deal with new challenges they’ll face when their spouses or parents depart. Such topics as family finances and powers of attorney were explained, and everyone had the opportunity to meet the command’s direct family representative, the ombudsman.

The service members deploying to U.S. Military Hospital Kuwait will relieve the 300-plus Naval Reservists from Fleet Hospital Dallas who have staffed the hospital and clinics for the past year.