When I graduated from the OR Nursing Course in Nov. 76, I was transferred to Brooke Army Medical Center for my first assignment. It was a great place to learn through the diversity and volume of caseload, and the "normal" chaos of working in a teaching hospital. Interns and Residents were everywhere and frequently clueless. I had to learn to assert myself with physicians and OR staff members in order to ensure that standards were followed and we provided the best care for our patients. BAMC was a multi-campus medical center. The building above was the so-called Main Hospital. The OR there was smaller, doing General Surgery, OB-GYN, Urology and a few other specialties. Down the road about a mile was Beach Pavilion, which was actually a cavalry barracks which was converted into a hospital in WWII. The Mess Hall at Beach was originally the stables, which explained a lot. We did Open Heart, Neuro, Orthopedics and other specialties there.

Although the surgical techs worked strictly at one or the other, as a nurse I rotated from campus to campus, learning the entire caseload. When working night shift or weekend duty, I had to be ready to do emergency cases of any specialty at either location. There were some mornings that, after going from campus to campus doing emergencies during the night, I wasn't sure where I was.

Although I learned a lot at BAMC, I got tired of being a very small fish in a large pond and reached the point where I was ready for more autonomy and opportunity to give input. That came in my next assignment, at the Burn Unit, which was housed as a tenant organization at Main Hospital.