Page 36 - QARANC Vol 19 No 1 2021

34 The Gazette QARANC Association
Army Student Nurse Training Suspended: Op GRANBY – September 1990
In September 1990 22 Field Hospital mobilised to Bahrain; in October the Cambridge Military Hospital (CMH) as 33 Field Hospital mobilised to Al Jubail, Saudi Arabia. Also deployed, to a desert location, were personnel from BMH Hannover; Berlin; Munster; Rinteln as 32 Field Hospital and 205 (Scottish) General Hospital to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This, the largest deployment of AMS since WW2, was facilitated by reducing clinical capacity of military hospitals in UK and BAOR, which in turn compromised sustainability of Army student nurse training.
While Brigadier Field (Director Army Nursing Services [DANS]) was unreservedly committed to training continuing, the English National Board (ENB), the then regulatory body for nurse training, raised critical questions; they assumed a high profile, challenging not only the congruence of the ‘real world’ student learning experience with the approved curriculum, but also the issue of student welfare. Colonel Numbers, Head of Nurse Education Army (HNE) explored potential options as follows with MOD, the ENB and, most importantly, the Army nurse teaching team:
Continue training all students, delivering theoretical components in-house but utilising NHS clinical placements
Invite a comprehensive temporary take-over by an NHS school of nursing Suspend all training, deploying some/all of the students to 33 Field Hospital; retaining some/all in the UK in a Battle Casualty Replacement (BCR)
role
Determining factors influencing the
final decision were:
• No budget for any NHS
assistance
• Workforce implications of
suspension in the face of unknown medical support requirements and casualty estimates, the anticipatory baseline being the Falklands War (1982)
• Potential ENB censorship, negatively impacting future AMS nurse training.
• Subject to the Nurses’ Act and ENB regulations nursing schools at that time delivered their
own individual programmes; incompatibility between NHS and military nurse training was insurmountable.
Field hospital workforce requirements were paramount; student nurse training was suspended. A brief precedent, set during the Suez Crisis of the 1950s, was minor by comparison. Concurrently DANS was adamant that new student intakes would continue. One cohort was nearing recruit training completion; another was designated for introductory course in January 1991; a third cohort was already on the drawing board. None of these could be deployed operationally or as BCRs.
No-one could forecast the duration of operations, but the inevitability of a qualified nurse workforce shortfall going forward was clearly recognised. A decision was reached to continue to completion students within six months of qualifying, while starting introductory courses. These two student categories sported green name badges; those whose training was suspended were ‘red-badged’. Diplomacy was needed from the teaching team to establish this new status quo. Unsurprisingly, there was quite a lot of confusion as new arrangements bedded in.
Red badge students deployed to the Gulf underwent intensive training, as did their teachers, preparing for the desert. Meanwhile a minimal teaching team, comprising two qualified nurse tutors (myself [Captain Doresa] on the brink of promotion to Major and HNE) augmented by Major Pauline Horton, Registered Clinical Nurse Teacher, Captain Pete Childerley and Captain Tracy Taylor, nee Sims, hit the ground running. Defying the ENB’s clinical teacher extinction, we had developed a Clinical Experience Manager (CLEM) role which more than proved its worth in these unexpected circumstances. The CLEM’s task was to ensure congruency between the actual student clinical experience and the curriculum. The ENB came to accept that this was a robust and valuable tool in our response. CLEMs were nursing officers with aspirations to develop their professional life in nurse education. As for me, I was initially briefed for deployment with 33 Field but was then told that I would stay behind, posted to QEMH as Senior Nurse Tutor leading
the team. I unpacked, began closing the School in Aldershot, then repacked and moved to Woolwich.
Meanwhile, the most important objective was securing ‘cost-free’ NHS clinical placements for introductory course students. Various hospitals in London and the south east agreed to help. However, the first introductory course (2/90) arrived with little or no knowledge of the London transport system; we orientated them from Woolwich to their designated placements, helping them navigate the Underground and bus network. CLEM work later also picked up the challenge of ‘pay-as-you-eat’, not a system which Army recruits had previously experienced!
The winter weather created problems; heavy snow in January/ February 1991 prolonged a return car trip from Woolwich to Aldershot by HNE and Pauline to collect final, confirmed exam papers allowing us to give our 3rd year students their Registered General Nurse results. At a time when there was little to celebrate the chance to congratulate the successful students was much appreciated.
On 29 November 1990, the UN Security Council had authorised the use of force against Iraq if it did not withdraw from Kuwait by 15 January 1991. But Hussein failed to budge; combat started on 16 January, with US and British warplanes bombing Iraqi armour and troop formations. I remember that day; Tracy and I were at the QATC preparing for a student nurse selection board. The over-riding concern was for friends and colleagues in the Gulf; interview breaks were spent gathered around a radio eagerly seeking news.
Coincidentally, Tracy and I were back at the QATC conducting another selection board on 28 February when news broke of the Iraqi Army defeat and their retreat. Around the QATC the relief was palpable; sooner or later friends and colleagues would be returning home. Everyone had worried about students, colleagues and friends deployed in the Gulf. We depended on airmailed letters, alias ‘blueys’, and appreciated seeing familiar faces on BBC screened television coverage from the field hospitals. Lunch in the QEMH lecture theatre regularly