“Nurses in War” Authors to Discuss Book During Distinguished Nursing Lecture Series at Rutgers-Camden

The Rutgers School of Nursing–Camden is paying tribute to these courageous and skilled individuals during its inaugural Distinguished Nursing Lecture Series on Friday, Nov. 2. The event will be held during 3-6 p.m. in the Campus Center Multi-Purpose Room on the Rutgers–Camden campus.

Authors Elizabeth Scannell-Desch and Mary Ellen Doherty will discuss their compelling book, Nurses in War: Voices from Iraq and Afghanistan. The book presents the experiences of 37 military nurses and the challenges and dangers they faced caring for soldiers from deployment to discharge in mobile surgical field hospitals, detainee care centers, base and city hospitals, Medivac aircraft, and aeromedical staging units.

“The Rutgers School of Nursing–Camden is proud to host this important conference and present the work of these noted scholars, whose work focuses on the challenges facing the nursing professionals who serve our country and our armed forces,” says Joanne Robinson, dean of the Rutgers School of Nursing–Camden. “It is a significant yet underexamined issue for the nursing profession.”

The authors will discuss their book with invited members of the Rutgers–Camden campus community, including nursing students and alumni, and members of the South Jersey nursing community, including representatives from Cooper University Hospital, Kennedy University Hospital, and Virtua. A Q&A session will follow the lecture.

The book is divided into thematic chapters on issues including: how the nurses separated from their families and the uncertainties they faced in doing so; their response to horrific injuries that combatants, civilians, and children suffered; working and living in Iraq and Afghanistan; personal health; and what it meant to care for enemy insurgents and detainees.

The nurses profiled in the book also discuss how the experience enhanced their clinical skills, why their adjustment to civilian life was so difficult, and how the war changed them as nurses, citizens, and people.

Scannell-Desch is a professor and former chair in the Division of Nursing at Mount Saint Mary College in New York. From 1972 to 1997, she was an Air Force nurse, rising from the rank of lieutenant, clinical nurse to colonel, command nurse executive at U.S. Air Force headquarters in the Pentagon. She is a highly decorated senior military officer who has won civilian honors from the Veteran’s Administration, Rutgers University, and the Foundation of New York State Nurses.

Scannell-Desch presents her research internationally and consults on topics related to nursing in war and leadership.

Doherty is an associate professor of nursing at Western Connecticut State University. Her nursing specialization includes nurse-midwifery, childbirth education, maternal-newborn nursing, and family practice. Her research focuses on women’s health, widowhood during pregnancy (following the 9/11 terrorist attacks and during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan), therapeutic alliance, decision making in formulating birth plans, and midwifery care.

She has received numerous awards for her clinical expertise, research studies, and humanitarian efforts.

For more information about the event and to register, contact Sonia Krutzke at (856) 225-6544 or at sonia.krutzke@camden.rutgers.edu.  

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