Future Army nurses gain clinical experience at Fort Campbell, BACH

Four college nursing students traded their textbooks in for hospital scrubs to participate in the U. S. Army Nurse Summer Training Program at Blanchfield Army Community Hospital, at Fort Campbell for several week in July.

The students are members of the Army’s Reserve Officer Training Corps, which provides up to 100% of tuition coverage at more than 1,000 colleges and universities. According to the U.S. Army Cadet Command, each summer, more than 200 Army ROTC cadets with an academic major of nursing are selected for NSTP at one of 20 military hospitals in the United States and abroad.

“The MHS provides regular medical and dental care, so service members are in good health and capable of deploying where our nation needs them," said Army Nurse Lt. Col. Manuel Galaviz, Blanchfield Army Community Hospital’s assistant deputy commander for nursing, and sponsor of the hospital’s ROTC nurse cadets. "Army nurses are also a component of a ready medical force capable of going anywhere our nation needs to establish and sustain healthcare, whether that is in a foxhole or field hospital, or even in support of humanitarian missions.”

Each of the four nurse cadet was paired with a nurse preceptor, an experienced licensed nurse who is qualified to teach and supervise nursing students. At BACH, the cadets were assigned to one of four main areas in the hospital —  medical-surgical ward, the emergency center, ICU, and labor and delivery — where they gained more than 140 hours each of clinical nursing experience.

In addition to their rotations at Blanchfield, the cadets also visited the Fort Campbell-based 531st Hospital Center, a mobile healthcare unit, to see how the Army delivers life-saving health care in deployed environments.

This article originally appeared on Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle: Future Army nurses gain clinical experience at Fort Campbell, BACH