US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps Nurses: responding in times of national need.

The US Public Health Service (PHS) is one of 7 uniformed services operating for the nation. Nurses form the largest category of personnel in the PHS and are integral members of teams identified to deploy in times of national need. PHS nurses serve "in harm's way" to protect and defend the public health of the nation during national emergencies and disasters of great magnitude, such as 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the H1N1 virus outbreak, and so forth. In this article, the authors discuss how active-duty Commissioned Corps nurses in the US PHS respond during times of national need. Military nurses may be asked to serve in war zones, participate in humanitarian missions, and care for military beneficiaries. By contrast, the role of nurses in the Commissioned Corps is to protect, defend, and advance the public health of the nation. PHS nurses are critical members of interdisciplinary health care teams organized to provide health care to diverse populations in the United States and abroad.

Mass casualty care in an expeditionary environment: developing local knowledge and expertise in context.

To discover new experience-based clinical and care delivery knowledge learned in the Iraq and Afghanistan combat zones, 107 Air Force, Army, and Navy nurses were interviewed. Eight areas of experiential knowledge were identified in the new care delivery system that featured rapid transport, early trauma and surgical care, and expeditious aeromedical evacuation: (1) organizing for mass casualties, (2) uncertainty about incoming casualties, (3) developing systems to track patients, (4) resource utilization, (5) ripple effects of a mass casualty event, (6) enlarging the scope of nursing practice, (7) operating medical facilities under attack, and (8) nurse emotions related to mass casualties.

An integrative review of nursing workforce studies.

The purpose of this chapter is to present an analysis of selected published nursing workforce studies published between the years of 2005 and 2010. Thirteen nursing workforce studies were reviewed and analyzed using a modification of the method suggested by Ganong (1987). Nursing workforce studies were selected based on the following criteria: (1) the date of publication was between the years of 2005 and 2010; (2) the primary focus was on nurses working in practice; or, as students or faculty in nursing educational programs. When reviewed, the 13 studies (1) lacked uniform measures among databases; (2) lacked longitudinal studies that followed the respondent over time from the beginning of their career to retirement; (3) had response rates that contributed to small sample sizes or sampling frame that did not take into consideration all characteristics of interest; (4) lacked attention to an interdisciplinary mix of providers; and (5) implied the need for future study on intergenerational characteristics due to shifting demographics in the profession and nursing workforce.