Page 12 - QARANC Spring 2024

12 The Gazette QARANC Association
were literally miracles happening in that facility – our survival rate was 97-98%.
“It was attracting a lot of worldwide wide attention because of what we were achieving. Sadly, it was common for us to see injured with both blown off limbs and gunshot wounds, due to the wounded once injured on the ground by an improvised explosive device (IED) then being shot by a sniper. Later some of these people died but the survival rate was incredible due to the response by Combat Medical Technicians at the scene followed by the Medical Emergency Response Team continuing treatment in the Chinook helicopter on evacuation. Then once at the Camp Bastion Hospital the injured would get consultant delivered care – the top end, highly skilled decision makers. We had a blood transfusion facility on site, which enabled blood to be transfused into the casualty fast and it was literally 10 steps distance from the emergency department to the operating theatre.”
Once casualties were stable in the emergency department, they would then go straight into a CT scanner to produce a 3D image of what was going on internally. They would then be operated on, taken to Intensive Care and after one or two nights, would be sent back to the UK. It became a model of good practice and started to attract global interest.
After this tour, Andrea was written up to receive the Royal Red Cross (RRC). She fondly remembers going to Buckingham Palace to receive this from the then Prince Charles. “My husband, who had served with the Parachute Regiment had received the Military Cross four years earlier, so I’d been to Palace once before, with him,” says Andrea. “When I came to get mine, the King said ‘I gave your husband his Military Cross, and I hear he’s in the audience today’ so he’d clearly been briefed well and it was quite a nice touch.”
Andrea’s next chapter saw her taking the Advanced
Andrea in ward dress as Ward Manager of Ward E3 at Royal Hospital Haslar
Andra and Colonel Sharon Findlay at the end of their tour in Iraq in 2003
When I came to get mine, the King said ‘I gave your husband
his Military Cross, and I hear he’s in the audience today’ so he’d clearly been briefed well and it was quite a nice touch.
Command and Staff course at Shrivenham, and in July 2014 she returned to Robertson house, where she was SO1 Personnel for nine months before being promoted to full Colonel in 2015. Andrea’s first posting as a full Colonel was as Deputy Head of Education and Training for the Defence Medical Services and following she was posted to Regional Command in Aldershot to be Commander Medical.
But at 45 she made the bold decision to leave the Army. She explains, “There was a bit of me thinking, right, I could continue my career in the Army for my remaining 10 years, but I did feel another career opportunity was in me. My husband had left the Army some 5 years before, and my daughter was in school, so we were putting down roots as a family. If I was going to have a second career opportunity, it was clear I needed to leave now”.
So Andrea did leave in June 2017 and joined Ashford and St Peter’s NHS Hospital, in Surrey, working under Chief Executive Suzanne Rankin – an ex-Navy nurse from her Haslar days. Andrea’s first role was Associate Director of Operations of Emergency Services, an area under huge pressure even today. “It was a baptism of fire, long hours and intense” she admits. Andrea drew on all of her military training and skills for the role, which she likens to being on “permanent operations”.
“The great thing about the military is you undertook a really intensive six or seven months of deployment, but you knew that at the end of it you would go to Cyprus to decompress. You would get six weeks’ leave and then go back to barracks, which was a different pace, whereas the NHS is high pressure all the time, “but I’ve loved it and I do thrive on that,” says Andrea.
She gained Director experience on the emergency side of an acute hospital and also on the planned, elective care side, gaining a really solid grounding. Her next role was Deputy Chief Nurse and shortly afterwards she became Chief Nurse at the Trust.
Then COVID hit. Andrea’s military training and leadership skills once again came to the fore and ensured she was well prepared to meet the challenge. Leading her staff through the pandemic and maintaining their resilience was of course