Today, we mark the 75th anniversary of the NHS. At RAF Brize Norton we have RAF Medics who work closely with the NHS every day.
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Flight Lieutenant Steph Swan, a Royal Air Force Nurse, tell us her story of working for the NHS prior to joining the Royal Air Force Medical Service...
My relationship with the National Health Service started in 2010, when I began studying at Southampton University, graduating 3 years later with a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Adult Nursing. I took up my first position as a staff nurse at Watford General Hospital within the Emergency Department (ED), allowing me to consolidate my previous training. Here I learned what it was like feel like a true member of a team.
Keen to extend my knowledge in Emergency Care, I applied to the Queen's Medical Centre (QMC), Nottingham a Major Trauma Centre. It was exhilarating to work here, and it really got my blood pumping with adrenaline. A moment’s lapse in concentration could have devastating repercussions. For that reason, the unit was regimental and had incredibly high standards. The Senior Sisters were the corner stone of the department; coordinating the chaos into a streamlined system. Patients would be rushed through the emergency doors close to death with devastating injuries only to be resuscitated by a medical team comprising of highly skilled Doctors, Nurses, and Health Care Professionals.
Having found my feet, I wanted a new challenge and I often reflected to when I was a teenager. In 2003, during the peak of Op HERRICK, I would watch the news intensely, in awe of these brave men and women retrieving injured soldiers from the frontline. It was during this time I decided that I wanted to join the RAF. Fast forward a few years to 2017, I left the NHS and graduated from RAF Collage Cranwell as a Nursing Officer. My first stop was Royal Centre of Defence Medicine (RCDM) Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham. Once again, I found myself back in the familiar setting of working alongside my NHS colleagues, but this time I was maintaining my clinical skills, ready to deploy wherever the military needed me.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, I was posted to the John Radcliffe Hospital RCDM (Oxford), to work within the ED, caring for those with COVID-19 and to support the NHS vaccination programme. This experience was like no other, one with new challenges, but nonetheless still hugely rewarding and a privilege to provide care for those in need during a national crisis.
During the same posting, I was again watching the news. However, this time it was the two earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria that struck on 6th February 2023. Only a couple of days later, I was just finishing a shift in the John Radcliffe Hospital ED, when I got the call “you’re being stood up; expect to be deployed to assist in Türkiye”. I was being deployed to Türkiye to provide humanitarian assistance to civilians who have been affected by the earthquake, under Op GREENLIGHTER.
Plucked from the John Radcliffe NHS Hospital and arriving at Tactical Medical Wing (TMW) the next day. Getting ready to deploy was an awakening. I joined TMW’s Operations Squadron; a highly deployable medical team, always on readiness to respond anywhere in the world. On this occasion, the team included skilled general nurses, GPs, consultants, a physician, RAF Medics, Environmental Health Technician, and a Medical and Dental Servicing Section Technician.
On 14th February, the team left RAF Brize Norton heading for Türkiye. We arrived at the site of the field hospital in Türkiye at 3am and were greeted with temperatures of -10 degrees and snow topped mountains. The accommodation came in the form of bashers and the ablutions didn’t leave much to the imagination. However, it did allow us to break down barriers quickly between colleagues and get to know each other. This is where all my years of clinical training and experience of working in the NHS would combine with my military training. This felt like home.
It was while deployed on Op GREENLIGHTER, I bumped into one of my old nursing colleagues from Watford ED. As newly qualified nurses, we started our careers together in the NHS and were now reunited in Türkiye. While it was many years since we had last seen each other, it felt like only yesterday; the only difference now was, she was a Sergeant Nurse in 16 Medical Regiment, and I was a Nursing Officer in the RAF. It was a world away from where we had started as fresh faced nurses. So much has changed since those days, we reminisced about our time in Watford ED and caught up on 10 years of missed time. But here we were both having come full circle to be reunited. With more experience and a lot more time under our belts we plunged into setting up and establishing the field hospital.
Needing to be ready to deploy at a moment’s notice, the John Radcliffe Hospital and NHS trusts around UK, provide MOD personnel the clinical exposure to maintain and gain advanced clinical skills, to fulfil our military roles. This mutually beneficial relationship sees the NHS and military working collaboratively with one shared goal, to look after people. The medical research gained from operations in Afghanistan and Iraq spearheaded trauma medicine and has saved countless civilian lives back home in the UK. On the 75th anniversary of the formation of the NHS, it’s important to appreciate how far it has come and its life changing achievements along the way.
Thank you, to all those in the NHS, who turn up to work each day and give it their all.
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