A Tour of FOB Salerno Hospital

Who is in Afghanistan, saving lives and easing suffering of US and Coalition casualties and injured Afghan civilians, I thought you might enjoy seeing some of the people here at the Salerno Hospital.

LtCol Howard Phillipi,
Chief Nurse

Mike and Fred

on duty

in the Hosptial HQ

The most important

part of our hospital is the people.

We’re an eclectic mix of Army and Air Force, Active Duty and Reserve, old and young. We’re half Army, half Air Force. We come from all over the country; from Washington State, California, Maine, Florida and everywhere in between.

We’ve got Active duty Army and Air Force, Army and Air Force Reserve, and Air National Guard.

Our youngest Soldier is 19; our oldest Soldier is 55 years old.

Jena, Sara, Patrict

X-ray and

Respiratory Therapy

Catie (patient?),

Loretta, Danielle,

and Susan

On the WARD

We are a trauma unit. We don’t care for many sick people.

We deal with lots of trauma; gunshot wounds, blast injuries, motor vehicle accidents and falls, to name a few.

Lots of open fractures.

Lots of penetrating injuries.

Lots of amputations.

And Lots of other things not suitable for this blog.

Chrystal and Angela

OR Tech

&

OR Nurse

Ready for a Patient

The controlled chaos

of the Emergency Room

Combat Trama

Surgery

Cpt James Goode

CRNA

Cleaning up after the MASCAL

(Mass Casualty Event)

We’ve got all the important parts of a hospital:

Operating Room, Intensive Care Ward, X-Ray, Laboratory, Pharmacy and even a CT scanner, but we're still in tents with wooden floors. The FOB itself is still very primitive. On our FOB there are no paved streets. When it rains, it floods. The hospital floods, the streets flood, the gym floods.

If you wear your rubber boots, you’re fine. Otherwise, you get wet feet.

So there it is, a peek inside our facility,

a peek at our people and our home.

(I thought it would be interesting to all who have followed this blog for the past eight months.)

Thank you

for reading and praying and caring.

Thank you

for remembering the Soldiers in Afghanistan, the “other” war.

Phillips, OUT