When Duty Calls
Nurses who served in Vietnam serve as role models in their commitment to care

By Beth Ulrich, Ed.D., RN, South Central Editor
August 19, 2002

Although their reasons for going to Vietnam varied, the nurses who served in the war all had in common a desire to care for people who needed their help. Much of their work went largely unnoticed until the TV series "China Beach." While the series took a lot of liberties, it did bring to the forefront that nurses served in Vietnam.

The nurses of Vietnam knowingly went into a war zone because people there needed their help. Thirty-plus years later, these nurses still can vividly remember patients they saved and those they could not. They also remember the feeling of bombs falling far too close and the reactions of some Americans when they returned to the States.

Sadly, it took until 1993 for the thousands of women who served in Vietnam to be recognized with the dedication of the Vietnam Women's Memorial, which includes eight trees planted for American nurses who died in Vietnam.

There's a scene in a "China Beach" episode that always gives me goose bumps, no matter how often I see it. Nurse Colleen McMurphy has come home, and after days of no one wanting to talk with her about what she has been doing in Vietnam, she visits the VA hospital, where she knows she will find people with whom she can relate. There, she talks with the patients, one of whom recognizes her. He tells the other patients about how she helped save his life and how he has always remembered her comforting voice.

As she starts to walk out of the room, he yells, "That's my nurse!" over and over, in a voice full of emotion, pride and gratitude. The goose bumps come as you feel the impact McMurphy had on this soldier's life and realize that this represents the impact that individual nurses can have on other people each and every day of their practice.

Although what nurses routinely do may not be as dramatic as saving a soldier's life in the midst of a war in a foreign country and while few of us will ever get the overt gratitude from patients that McMurphy received, our commitment to helping others can only be strengthened by looking to the nurses who served in Vietnam. Their work during the war and their fortitude since then make them worthy role models for us all.

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