The Naval Nursing midshipmen of ROTC heard alumni speak on their own experience with a career in Naval Nursing on Saturday.
The symposium’s six speakers offered practical advice for Marquette’s 14 Naval Nurses in-training on such matters as how to anticipate orders following graduation, career opportunities and how to take advantage of military educational programs.
Ensign Kristen Stonieki spoke about what Naval Nurses can expect immediately after graduation: an unnerving wait for their first orders, broken by preparation for the National Council Liscensure Examination-Registered Nurse (NCLEX) and orientation at one of the Navy’s three teaching hospitals.
Stonieki graduated Marquette in 2007 with a bachelor’s degree in nursing. She has since reported to her first duty station, the Naval Medical Center San Diego.
Stonieki said she originally wanted to specialize in pediatrics, but tried to keep an open mind throughout her education. When she arrived in San Diego, she was exposed to humanitarian programs and inspired by women on her floor’s humanitarian work. Now Stonieki said she has a good chance of serving on the USNH Mercy or USNH Comfort, humanitarian relief ships.
Cmdr. Don Raymundo spoke of his own experience on the Mercy throughout the Pacific in the years following the 2005 tsunami. He provided medical care for impoverished communities, and trained local healthcare providers.
Raymundo said humanitarianism allows the United States to show “soft power.”
“Our mission is to establish partnerships, to develop and establish a relationship with countries…To win hearts and minds, so hopefully they will side with us,” said Raymundo.
Humanitarian vessels collaborate with Operation Smile and Project Hope, non-governmental organizations dedicated to correcting the cleft pallets of children in poor nations through simple surgeries.
Lt. j.g. Robert Naquin spoke about his own career with the Naval Nurses; after his 2005 graduation, he requested immediate deployment. He ultimately reported to the Naval Hospital, Camp Lejuene, where he worked in the post-partum ward. Naquin made use of the time training in the hospitals emergency rooms and intensive care units.
In 2007, Naquin deployed with a surgical company and a Marine logistics group to serve the medical demands of the ongoing war in Iraq out of Camp Virginia in Kuwait.
The hospital there had eight beds, and the doctors operated on wooden tables. The post-operating room doubled as a lunch room for hospital staff, among its other functions. Wooden doors separated the main hospital wing from the operating room.
“The operating room was probably cleaner than a lot of hospitals here,” said Naquin. “We cleaned it, top-to-bottom, every day. It was a pain.”
“You hear about Florence Nightingale running around the battlefield saving lives—that’s us,” said Naquin. “It’s come full circle.”
Usually, nurses require up to seven years of training before receiving certification to administer emergency medical care in helicopter flight, but he and his colleagues started doing just that “right away.”
Naquin was also Company Supply Officer, a position which put him in charge of the Authorized Medical Allowance List, a $3.5 million supply distribution center. It is one of the primary sources of medical equipment in western Iraq.
Naquin is continuing his education through the Naval Duty Under Instruction (DUINS) program, a graduate-student analogue to ROTC by which officers continue to receive payment and financial support to continue their education. For DUINS, Naquin hopes to attend Penn State for study of disaster management, which would qualify him for leadership in relief efforts in the wake of natural catastrophes, biological warfare or terrorist attacks.
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