TITLE:
Description of United States Military Nurses Deployed to Afghanistan & Iraq, 2001-2015
AUTHORS:
Cristóbal Berry-Cabán, Felecia Rivers, Thomas A. Beltran, Lawrence Anderson
KEYWORDS:
Military, Nursing, Afghanistan, Iraq
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Nursing,
Vol.8 No.1,
January
31,
2018
ABSTRACT: Since 2001, US military forces have been engaged in
Afghanistan and in Iraq. During fifteen years of conflict in both operations US
troops have incurred a total of 52,022 wounded and 6857 deaths. The aim of this
analysis is to describe the characteristics of US military nurses that deployed to these combat theatres. Data for this retrospective analysis
were provided by the US Department of Defense, Defense Manpower Data Center and
describes characteristics military nurses that deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq,
or both between September 1, 2001 and July 31, 2015. A total of 6326 nurses deployed during this period; 3296 nurses deployed to Afghanistan and 2683 nurses deployed to Iraq. Fifty-five
percent of deployed nurses were male. The majority of deployed nurses were
white (32.9%) followed by Hispanic (22.9%) and black nurses (14.5%). Most deployed
nurses had a baccalaureate nursing degree (88.9%) and 9% deployed nurses had an
advanced degree. Most deployed nurses were classified as general nurses
(66.6%). Further research is needed to examine in detail the impacts of
deployments upon nurses.