My name is Pam Smith-Beatty and I served in the Air Force for 22 years from 1981 until 2003.
As a nursing student I did my first and last, um, nursing clinical at the VA and I just remember being struck.
It was a sixteen-bed ward where it was just one big room, there were sixteen beds in it, the patients were all male which I was not used to.
They were wonderful to talk to, they had great, amazing stories of endurance, and, you know, perseverance, and, it was wonderful to talk to them but I also found it a little bit daunting – sixteen beds in one, you know, ward, I mean, how do you deal with that?
And I did find some of that same issue in the military although the largest bay I ever worked in was seven beds.
But we used to provide cigarettes on their lunch trays and, uh, two beers, you know, for lunch or supper so… that doesn’t happen anymore I can promise you that.
I joined in 1981 and at that time there wasn’t a lot of training that we were given.
I was a civilian accession, meaning I went from nursing school one day to the Air Force the next day and about the training I got was, now here’s where you place your core device and here’s where you place your name tag and don’t remove it.
So they really didn’t tell you that much.
They figured you were a medical service officer and so, you know or a nurse, and so you really didn’t need to know that.
Um, I also found that there was a lot of, uh, that same type of attitude on the line side.
So the pilots didn’t necessarily consider women or nurses to be part of the true Air Force.
It was a difficult position to be in and, uh, I think I remember that as being the one thing I fought against pretty much almost my whole career.
I served in mostly a women’s profession and being a nurse there weren’t that many men that I worked with but I did notice that the ones that I did work with seemed to get a lot more of the promotions.
For example, we had one male nurse who was promoted without a bachelor’s degree.
That is unheard of these days; it was pretty much unheard of that time.
Um, so it-it’s interesting how you see these, um, perceived differences and you don’t really know for sure why it is, but it just seems that there were some things always going to the male nurses – OR capability, the ICU experiences, and then the female nurses ended up on the general medical floor, and in OB, and you know, a lot of the- the predominantly female type positions.
Those also don’t lead to the better opportunities in the military either.
I served 22 years.
I was really happy to be able to relinquish that part, uh, and to start all over on the civilian side.
What I did find is that there’s a level of professionalism in the military that isn’t always present in the civilian force, and it was a little difficult for me because, as an officer, I was used to giving orders and all of a sudden you can’t order people around in the civilian world.
You have to learn how to motivate them so that your goals become their goals as well.
I know when I first got out, I don’t- I didn’t really consider myself as a Veteran per se.
I- I always said, oh I’m retired, or, you know, but I- I always think of the Veteran as my father, you know, who served in the Korean War.
You know, who went overseas and was in hostile territory and I- I didn’t do any of that.
But I also realized that it’s everyone who stays behind and everyone who does anything to help keep the mission going.
Those are the people that deserve the acknowledgement and, no matter what they did.
I find that women veterans don’t often get the acknowledgement that they deserve.
My husband is active duty and he often gets told thank you for your service and it isn’t until he says, “And my wife also served,” that then they actually put their attention towards me.
I find that really fascinating that there are still those same kind of impressions everywhere in the eight years since I’ve been out.
If I meet another woman Veteran I automatically feel a kinship to her because I know some of the things that she’s had to go through to succeed in that military world and, um, I think that in itself provides that camaraderie that you probably don’t get anywhere else.