In a significant development for mental health services in the military, U.S. Navy Lieutenant j.g. Lindsay Bender demonstrated strong leadership and empathy in her contributions throughout her military career, particularly at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. This resulted in her being chosen to fill the critical leadership billet of Assistant Service Chief.
U.S. Army Col. Wendy Woodall, Walter Reed’s director of nursing, emphasized that “This role is typically for an O-3 or higher and GS-12,” acknowledging the significance of Bender’s assignment.
Additionally, in March 2024, Bender was accepted into the Uniformed Services University (USU) Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner, Doctor of Nursing Practice Program. This achievement and progress involved Bender’s leadership ability, empathy, and collaborative mentality.
Daily Nurse named U.S. Navy Lieutenant j.g. Lindsay Bender the Nurse of the Week for her outstanding contributions as a Navy nurse, including her caring nature, innovative mindset, clinical expertise, commitment to nursing excellence, and military mental health services.
While at Walter Reed, Bender took on multiple roles, notably serving as the Assistant Service Chief of a 20-bed medical-surgical unit and efficiently leading more than 60 military and civilian personnel. The George Mason University graduate understood the gravity of occupying a role usually reserved for higher-ranking individuals, crediting her success to the guidance received and her experience in nursing leadership.
“I feel very fortunate to have been selected to fill this role,” Bender remarked. “I owe a lot of gratitude to the mentors and leaders I’ve worked with throughout my career, who have helped shape me into who I am today.”
Recognizing her work as Assistant Service Chief as a continuation of her recent experience as a floor nurse, which influenced leadership decisions, Bender added, “Nursing is a team effort, and I approach each day as a unique opportunity to improve upon the previous day, with the awareness that influence can be felt throughout every level of the leadership structure.”
She also acknowledged her “floor experience” for providing a distinctive perspective when discussing unit operations and management with other nursing leaders, underlining the significance of a supportive and collaborative environment.
Additionally, Bender was a Patient Safety Advisor and ‘Super User’ for MHS GENESIS, the DOD’s new electronic health records system.
As a Patient Safety Advisor, Bender played a significant role in enhancing patient safety and quality improvement, fostering an environment of understanding and compassion essential for patient care.
Adapting to change, Bender led efforts during the MHS GENESIS implementation as a ‘Super-User,’ contributing to staff proficiency by linking traditional practices with new technology.
Committed to innovation and process improvement, Bender used her ‘why’ approach to revamp the nursing workflow for lab specimen handling across the directorate, improving policies and resulting in increased scanning compliance rates among nursing staff.
Bender’s dedication to military mental health services was further fueled by her personal experiences, leading to her pursuit of a degree in Psychiatric Mental Health from USU. This degree program begins this month.
“Throughout my career, I have encountered various stigmas and barriers toward seeking mental health care, which has fueled my passion for advocacy for change,” Bender explained. “This is why the opportunity to complete the Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner, Doctor of Nursing Practice degree through USUHS is so exciting!”
Her advocacy was driven by recognizing the need among service members, including the challenges of military life and seeking mental health treatment.
“I hope to be an advocate for change and another person in the fight to increase mental health services for service members,” shared Bender. “The opportunity to attend USUHS and receive a top-quality education is life-changing, and I’m extremely grateful.”
Nominate a Nurse of the Week! Every Wednesday, DailyNurse.com features a nurse making a difference in the lives of their patients, students, and colleagues. We encourage you to nominate a nurse who has impacted your life as the next Nurse of the Week, and we’ll feature them online and in our weekly newsletter.
Alice Darrow, a former Navy nurse, was honored for her love of life and patriotic commitment to our country as one of the last living links to Pearl Harbor when she celebrated her 105th birthday in Danville, California, surrounded by family, friends, and community members.
Darrow was born in 1919 in Paso Robles and enrolled in nursing school after finishing high school. She then served as a Navy nurse and worked at Peralta Hospital in Oakland when Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941. She is considered among the last of the ‘greatest generations in American history.’
Daily Nurse proudly names Alice Darrow Nurse of the Week in recognition of her love of life, patriotic commitment to our country, and status as one of the last living links to Pearl Harbor.
One Naval officer was blown off his boat as Japanese gunmen kept firing as Darrow (then Alice Beck) climbed aboard his rescue boat. “When the boat came by to pick him up, he was trying to pull himself up on the boat. They shot him. He got shot in the back,” Darrow says.
It wasn’t until four months later, while he was being treated for appendicitis, doctors did an x-ray and discovered a bullet in his heart. Darrow was assigned to him as his nurse.
“He asked me, ‘Ms. Becky, if I survive this, would you take liberty with me?’ Which was a shock. So, I said, ‘sure, why not?’ They didn’t think he was going to make it anyways,” says Darrow.
When Mr. Darrow died in 1991, the couple had been married for almost fifty years. Together, they raised four children in Lake County, where both parents were active in military memorial services.
Darrow credits her longevity to her secret to life. “Always have something to look forward to. It gets your body and mind ready for what’s next. And, of course, family, friends, and laughter.”
As for what’s next for Darrow, she’s looking forward to an ‘around the world’ cruise later this year with her daughter.
Nominate a Nurse of the Week! Every Wednesday, DailyNurse.com features a nurse making a difference in the lives of their patients, students, and colleagues. We encourage you to nominate a nurse who has impacted your life as the next Nurse of the Week, and we’ll feature them online and in our weekly newsletter.
The Black Hawk helicopter lands in a field behind the FBI Academy, its main rotor sending up a massive plume of dust and grit.
A handful of Uniformed Services University (USU) Graduate School of Nursing (GSN) Registered Nurse Anesthesia students hunker down over the litter they’re carrying to protect themselves and their “patient” from the helicopter’s powerful downwash.
Given the “all-clear” signal, the team gets up and moves to the Black Hawk, staying low under the awesome power of the blades as they evacuate their casualty. The students, using hand gestures to communicate, then work with Navy Cmdr. Ken Radford, USU’s Nurse Anesthesia program director, to intubate the training mannequin, their simulated patient. The first student is successful; Radford offers them a fist bump, and it’s time for the next student to step up and give it a try.
These GSN students are taking part in the Trauma Culmex training exercise held in conjunction with the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team in Quantico, Va., just days before their graduation from USU.
Radford says GSN faculty have provided training for the Hostage Rescue Team medical personnel in the past, which helped to open the door for the nurse anesthesia students to receive their own educational opportunity on the FBI Academy grounds.
“This is the first time that we’ve held this simulated trauma experience so this is an incredible opportunity for them to round out their training,” Radford says.
The event was conceptualized by Dr. Matthew Welder, special assistant to the USU President for operational medicine and Radford, and executed by Air Force Lt. Col. Janet Sims, director for Simulation and Navy Lt. Cmdr. Lauren Suszan, director of Clinical Education, for the RNA program at USU.
The Trauma Culmex was developed to fulfill the registered nurse anesthesia student trauma simulation curriculum requirement in their last semester of clinical education. Students take part in training and exercises focused on providing care in austere environments for both injured service members and military working dogs.
Radford says providing his students with a chance to close out their training with the event helps to get them in the right mindset for an operational deployment.
“Our mission is to train anesthesia providers that can provide anesthesia care in austere settings and this was a way for us to round out their education as they approached graduation,” Radford says. “It’s really incredible.”
Inside one building, its walls still spattered with the bright paint of simulated training ammunition used to mimic live bullets during exercises, USU students work on crisis actors made up to look like they have a host of traumatic wounds. Instructors analyze the decisions of the soon-to-be-graduates as they manage the series of injuries their patients experience.
Sims checks in on one group, making sure all of the many moving parts of the trauma culmination exercise are running smoothly before heading back outside. There, a team of four load their patient onto a military ambulance, climbing on and providing care as the vehicle drives off. Sims says their mission with the exercise is to prepare independent military anesthesia providers to give care in any operational and austere environment. She adds that partnering with the FBI and the Hostage Rescue Team was a natural choice to help meet this mission.
“USU students are well-prepared to provide medical care in fixed medical facilities with adequate staff and equipment,” Sims says. “However, operational readiness courses (like this) help prepare them for anesthesia care in the field.”
As students go from one exercise scenario to another, flash bangs go off, the rattle of gunfire echoes nearby, and FBI teams train only feet away in the next room.
“(The students) are taking care of patients with minimal equipment in a building of opportunity, transporting patients and dealing with all that comes along with that — lack of supplies, lots of noise, flash-bangs going off, gunfire, helicopters taking off and landing,” Sims says. “We also have to take care of the military working dogs as CRNAs (certified registered nurse anesthetists) when we’re deployed because they are one of the team and if they get hit, we take care of them until we can transfer them to a higher level of care.”
At another location students are being introduced to a retired military working dog and a half dozen “wounded” canine mannequins. The real dog waits patiently as the new group files in to learn about working with an injured military canine in the field.
“The experience has been great,” says Army student Maj. Andre Brown, adding that he and the others didn’t initially know what to expect before arriving for the exercise. “They hadn’t really given us any information before we got here. It was ‘hey, get a hotel at Quantico, meet at this place and these are the times we’re going to start.’ Then we get out there and it’s like ‘here’s your scenario, go — how would you react?’”
Brown says one of the day’s impactful lessons was learning about how to give care to an injured military working dog.
“I knew enough to get the dogs from point A to point B but here we’re learning more effective care, and a more effective means of how to do things,” Brown says. “… Everybody has been super knowledgeable with helpful tips that I hadn’t even thought about.”
Sims says this year’s collaboration with the FBI and the Hostage Rescue Team is essentially a test run for future trauma culmination exercises. She says the university currently has the “Gunpowder” exercise which helps expose USU students to a variety of challenges they may come across in the field, training them on tactical field care, tactical combat casualty care, prolonged casualty care, and forward resuscitative care.
“Unfortunately, the timeframe (for Gunpowder) does not align with most of our nurse anesthesia students as they attend a 21-month clinical rotation at various locations throughout the country” Sims says. “We’ll see how this exercise goes and obtain feedback from the faculty cadre and students and add or remove content to make it most beneficial to train and assess their trauma anesthesia skills.”
Navy student Lt. Cmdr. Joseph Dimarucut says taking part in the Trauma Culmex has been an amazing experience. Particularly, he says working to intubate a patient from within the confined space of a helicopter stands out to him as a valuable lesson that couldn’t be practiced in a hospital.
“It’s a good culmination of everything that we’ve learned put into practice and what we’ll expect to see in the field,” Dimarucut added.
Hurrying past FBI agents rappelling down a wall, the next group of USU graduate nursing students carries a litter holding a simulated patient, an instructor following closely behind. They arrive at an open field and soon the sounds of a helicopter’s rotor chopping through the day’s warm air once again grows louder. The dust hits them, they get up and hurry for its open doors and the training begins all over again.
With all that nurses do for our patients, it is only fitting that we do just as much for them, supporting nurses as they grow in their VA career.
Whether at the bedside of a Veteran or working in an outpatient clinic, our nurses deliver quality care and lead the way in innovating how we provide nursing care. Nurses also develop patient safety initiatives, conduct research to improve care delivery, and help guide the next generation of nurses.
Academic partnerships
VA and schools of nursing around the country offer academic affiliations. These collaborative efforts between VA facilities and the country’s finest nursing schools provide students with clinical experiences that specifically address the unique needs of Veteran population and prepare them to excel in careers at VA.
These partnerships offer nursing students a comprehensive and intensive four-year clinical training. The programs create a stronger, mutually beneficial relationship between nursing schools and VA facilities by giving students the opportunity to engage with faculty and ultimately provide better patient care as they put classroom concepts into practice.
By the end of the program, graduates are fully accustomed to the culture and mission at VA and ready to care for our Veterans.
Transition to practice
For over a decade, VA has promoted Registered Nurse Transition-to-Practice (RNTTP) residency programs to provide a transition from school to the more complex clinical environment for RNs with less than one year of experience.
The comprehensive 12-month curriculum explores the clinical, leadership and professional dimensions of nursing at VA. Post-graduate RNs perform the typical roles, duties, patient care activities and procedures that are carried out by nurses on our team.
Availability varies by location, so contact the nurse educator or nurse recruiter at a facility near you for more information.
Financial aid
VA offers eligible employees and students nursing scholarships to advance their education and skills training through the following programs:
The National Nursing Education Initiative (NNEI), a component of the Employee Incentive Scholarship Program, funds the pursuit of bachelor’s and advanced degrees for VA RNs.
The VA National Education for Employees Program (VANEEP) is offered to employees in a clinical program pursuing first-time licensure in a clinical occupation. Participants can earn their degree faster by attending school full time, with VA covering not only some education costs but also replacement salary while they are enrolled.
The VA Learning Opportunities Residency (VALOR) program provides an opportunity for outstanding college nursing students to develop clinical competencies at an approved VA Medical Center. VALOR is designed to increase participants’ clinical skills, clinical judgement and critical thinking while caring for our nation’s Veterans. This program provides opportunities for learning with a qualified RN preceptor. Students must have completed their junior year in an accredited baccalaureate nursing program. VALOR students are offered up to 800 hours of salary dollars.
Work at VA
Are you ready to help us heal and care for Veterans so they can thrive in life after military service? Apply for a job as a VA nurse.
Leaving a lasting mark on the organization they serve is a dream for many, but for one nurse, through her career in the Army Reserve, she’s been able to do just that.
Lt. Col. Kelly Bell, MSN, RN, CEN, USAR, commander of the 7203rd Medical Support Unit in Hobart, Indiana, successfully advocated for accommodations of pregnant Soldiers and new parents, resulting in Army policy change at the highest level.
“Be the change. Advocate for your soldiers.”
Announced and released on April 21, 2022, Bell was an integral contributor and author of the new Parenthood, Pregnancy, and Postpartum Army Directive. The directive features 12 distinct policy changes that pertain to pregnant and postpartum Soldiers as well as new parents. Changes touch on areas ranging from deployment deferments, an extended timeline to take the Army Combat Fitness Test after giving birth, and attending professional military education while pregnant, to convalescent leave after pregnancy loss or miscarriage or stillbirth, and more.
“I just wanted to take care of my pregnant Soldiers the way I wanted to be taken care of,” she said of her collaboration on policy change.
“It’s a change I never thought I’d see in my career, and it’s been needed for many, many years,” said Capt. Jennifer DeMaio, a mobilization officer with Army Reserve Medical Command, who gave birth to her fourth child on April 20, 2022, the day before the directive was published.
DeMaio, who has had all four of her children while serving in the Army, said the attitude towards pregnancy is different now than it was 18 years ago when she had her first child. For example, she only received a four-month deployment deferment after having her first child.
DeMaio also praised the new one-year timeline to prepare and train for the Army Combat Fitness Test after childbirth, mentioning the level of athleticism and healing that is necessary.
“The events are completely different,” DeMaio said of the new test. “And they are harder. This one-year prep time for the ACFT is completely needed.”
DeMaio experienced a complicated pregnancy this time around and delivered a baby girl, Jessah, via C-section at 26 weeks after several weeks of bed rest. DeMaio said she is grateful for her command’s reaction to and support of her pregnancy—a hint that culture change towards the normalization of parenthood has already begun.
“This unit is the most accepting of any unit I’ve been in,” DeMaio said of her pregnancy. “I was scared to tell my leadership because I didn’t have the best reactions (to her pregnancies) in the past. But I can’t imagine it going any better—nothing but positivity.”
Maj. Quentin F. Stewart, a plans officer at Army Reserve Medical Command and father of a newborn, said he believes the policy changes align with the Chief of Staff of the Army’s “People First” initiative and will have an impact on retention.
“This is a really great change for the health and welfare of our Soldiers and Families,” Stewart, currently on paternity leave, said. “The foundation of everything we do in the Army begins with people and I believe the parent and postpartum changes bring the Army on par with the other services when it comes to supporting the important early years of new family additions.”
“I think culture shift takes a lot longer than just writing a directive, but we hope that the directive will give the tools to begin the normalization of parenthood that’s necessary.”
For Bell, advocating for new parents and helping foster change to Army policy isn’t new; she’s been fostering accommodations around this topic for a while.
Bell commissioned into the Army Reserve in 1999 through Marquette University’s Reserve Officer Training Corps program after earning a bachelor’s degree in nursing. Since then, she has worked as a nurse both in the Army, which included a deployment to Afghanistan and a stateside mobilization during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in her civilian career. In her civilian capacity, she now works at a Des Moines, Iowa Veterans Affairs primary care clinic.
With the bulk of her experience in emergency room nursing, Bell has loved taking care of others as a career. She explained that becoming pregnant with her first child while serving as a commander of a medical unit was eye-opening to the challenges faced by military mothers and new parents.
Winning the battle to support lactating mothers in a modern army
Bell encountered vague guidance on the postpartum period for new Army mothers, including in the area of accommodating a time and place for pumping breastmilk for their new infants.
“It’s a huge mental stress on a lactating Soldier if they aren’t provided the services to pump and store breastmilk for their children,” she explained.
And her first foray into advocacy touched on this issue. In 2018, Bell wrote an email to the sergeant major of uniforms branch, asking for provisions be made for lactating Soldiers to wear an alternate nursing t-shirt that would make pumping breastmilk more easily accessible: her request was approved.
This led to a revision to AR 670-1 in 2021 which includes the undershirt authorization and notes that Soldiers are permitted to breastfeed their nursing child anywhere the Soldier and child are authorized to be. Additionally, the updated uniform regulation does not require breastfeeding Soldiers to cover themselves with additional items while doing so.
“This is a really great change for the health and welfare of our Soldiers and Families.”
“I think the most significant thing this time around is the time I’ll have to get back to the standards,” said Spc. Kellie N. Steele from Midland, Michigan, a dental specialist in the 7203rd Medical Support Unit. Steele, who is now pregnant with her fourth child (her second while serving in the Army Reserve), said she is grateful that the new Army directive will give her a year after having her child to take a record Army Combat Fitness Test.
Steele explained that after having her last child in December 2020, she experienced hip and pelvic pain, and it wasn’t safe for her to lift weights until she had fully recovered from childbirth.
“Every woman’s body is different,” Steele said. “The fact that they are extending and accommodating things means a lot.”
Steele said she is also grateful for the lactation accommodations in the new directive, as breastfeeding her children is important to her. The directive clarified and expanded Army Regulation 600-20, Army Command Policy, and now dictates where, how long, and under what conditions commanders will provide lactating Soldiers the opportunity to express breastmilk and discusses its storage.
Bell was instrumental in facilitating the passing of a waiver to Tri-Service Bulletin Medical 530, which discusses food codes. The waiver allows for storage and management of breastmilk in field food establishment refrigerators, making it an option to store breastmilk for nursing Soldiers.
Steele explained that she was able to use this waiver firsthand while on annual training at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin and away from her then eight-month-old daughter for two weeks: she successfully stored her breastmilk and was able to transport it home after her temporary duty, rather than throwing it away.
Bell did not stop her advocacy there, and became active in moderating two popular Facebook groups aimed at giving Army mothers an outlet for discussing pregnancy and childbirth topics.
Normalizing treatment of soldier parents
Bell found in the Facebook groups that Soldiers of all ranks and components pointed out further gaps in policy, education, and empathy on behalf of command teams. Concerns that continued to come up from new mothers included maternity and paternity leave, postpartum body composition testing, being excluded from attending professional military education while pregnant, and leadership education, among others.
Bell, along with 10 other authors, wrote a white paper published in 2021 that addressed these topics and stood as recommended revisions to the Army’s pregnancy and postpartum policies. Bell’s particular area of concentration for the paper was looking at the Army’s current operational and deployment deferment for new parents. Through research, the author group concluded that a one-year deployment deferment is necessary for both the development of the child and the child’s bond to its parent.
“We wanted to keep at least one parent at home with the infant during the child’s first 12 months,” Bell explained.
The white paper had the desired effect: senior leaders listened. Just a year after the white paper was published, the policy has been issued—a speed of action which suggests how seriously the recommendations were taken by Army leadership.
“The Sergeant Major of the Army was an integral part of reading this … and working with us to get the words right from a very early stage,” said Amy Kramer, lead action officer for the policy during a Pentagon press briefing.
Kramer noted that becoming a parent is a healthy, natural part of life, and the Army is committed to de-stigmatizing it.
“I think culture shift takes a lot longer than just writing a directive, but we hope that the directive will give the tools to begin the normalization of parenthood that’s necessary,” Kramer said.
For Bell, she’s leaving behind a legacy of perhaps enabling pregnant Soldiers and new parents to be both phenomenal troops and caregivers at the same time—to be able to better balance both worlds without having to choose to compromise one.
“None of these policies are now going to help me personally, but they will give me the tools needed to be a better leader,” Bell explained, and said she won’t be having any more children herself, but wanted to help usher change to help future generations of Soldiers.
“Be the change,” she said. “Advocate for your Soldiers.”
And Bell has done just that.
To access the full directive, visit: https://armypubs.army.mil/ProductMaps/PubForm/Details.aspx?PUB_ID=1024798
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The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement.
A BSN pinning ceremony during a global pandemic is a dramatic event in itself. Amid the celebratory atmosphere, there is almost a mood of military enlistment among nursing grads. Newly minted BSNs are getting ready to work on the “frontlines,” and as we have seen over the past two years, many standout nurses have served in the armed forces. So, is it really that surprising that some nurses – like our Nurse (Couple) of the Week – are pairing off on route to the Covid Front?
Romantics like VBSN (Veteran to Bachelor of Science in Nursing) Darvin Del Rio like to make an impression when asking someone to become their life partner, and if you make one major rite of passage a gateway to another, it will definitely be an event to remember.
The San Antonio firefighter and flight paramedic felt that the woman of his dreams deserved nothing less than a “fairy tale proposal,” so – with the Dean’s blessing – he popped the question to his girlfriend/classmate/fellow vet Leianne Maugeri at their Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Nursing BSN pinning ceremony.
Did she say “yes?”
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According to the combat medic and brand-new nurse, “Of course, I said yes! I admire this man so much and am honored to spend the rest of my life with him.”
Apparently, Mr. Del Rio’s stratagem hit the target straight on, as his new fiancée added, “This was more than I ever dreamed of, and for that I will be forever grateful. Thank you, Devin, for showing me what it’s like to feel undoubtedly loved and cherished.”
Del Rio and his intended were first introduced in 2017 at Fort Bliss (yes; Fort Bliss, where else?). A year later, they were sharing a home. As the pandemic began to spread, the pair – like many veterans – saw nursing as a natural step from military to civilian service. With their paramedic and combat medicine experience, they made swift progress through the TTU accelerated VBSN program. Maugeri noted that the VBSN seemed tailor-made for them, given “our 9-plus years of experience in trauma and emergency medicine. This fast-paced environment is something we’ve become accustomed to through the military so it definitely stood above the rest.”
Maugeri’s fiancé said “completing the program in one year was a bonus,” but sounded both proud and humbled to confess, “Leianne has the better grades, hands down. She’s smarter than me by far. How she ended up with me, I don’t know. But I do thank my lucky stars for it. Sometimes it’s better not to question.”
However, it sounds like there is no question about this love match. When asked about one another, both nurses respond in terms that could easily double as self-penned wedding vows:
She: “It is crazy to think of all that we have endured together over the last four years — from serving as active-duty flight paramedics to graduating this nursing program together. It’s a wonderful thing to have gone through so much with my very best friend. I feel incredibly blessed.”
For his part, Del Rio waxes poetic: “She has a presence about her that lights the room…. Living with her these last four years is what has made me sure now more than ever.” He concluded with a vow that would win anyone’s heart: “Thank you, Leianne, for bringing out the best in me. Know that no matter what happens between us, I’ll always love you for the stability you’ve brought to this rocky world of mine. So long as I live, I’ll continue to give you the world.”
We wish the love-struck BSNs the very best. May they enjoy a long, happy marriage, and make a difference in patients’ lives for many years to come.
For more on the newly affianced grads, see the story at Lubbock Online.
