Becoming a Registered Nurse

The Future Face of Nursing Profiles

Nursing in the Canadian Forces: Major Vanessa Daniel

Major Vanessa Daniel, soon to be commanding officer of the Canadian Forces Training Centre in Vancouver, knows all too well the pressures and stress of running operating theatres in a war zone. A veteran of deployment, Daniel has served with Canadian Forces’ missions overseas to Haiti, Bosnia, and Afghanistan.

Daniel recently returned from Kandahar where she served as practice leader for perioperative nursing at the Multinational Medical Unit field hospital from February to August 2006. “We were physically and emotionally exhausted by the end of our tour,” says Daniel. She explains that an escalation in rocket assaults and heavy fighting during the spring and summer months resulted in more casualties which has affected morale among Canadian Forces personnel stationed there.

For Major Daniel, Kandahar presented a huge challenge. “Canada had never taken part in a mission like this before,” she says, explaining that “the little wood box” of a field hospital built by the Americans was not designed to meet the needs of the 100 medical staff that worked there.

At any given time there were two full surgical teams at work. One team was staffed by Canadians. The other team had health professionals from the Netherlands, Denmark and the United States. During her first six months in Kandahar, Major Daniel worked with nine different surgical teams from four nations and oversaw 400 surgeries in the crowded hospital. The majority of these were trauma cases–horrific war wounds and shattered bones–caused by gunfire,mortars, mines and bombs. Ninety-five per cent of the surgeries were performed on Afghan soldiers, police and civilians caught in the crossfire.

“The Afghan people are very committed and compassionate caregivers,” says Daniel, describing how fathers or other male relatives of patients (Afghan women traditionally stay at home) would sleep on the ground, under the beds of their recovering children.

Major Daniel and her operating room staff found it difficult to discharge Afghan patients after surgery knowing “they were not going to fare very well” in the war-torn region where housing, food and water were in short supply. Rarely did Major Daniel treat Afghan women. Only once during the time that she was there did an adult female come in for surgery and even then her husband did not leave her bedside.

Major Daniel, who holds two undergraduate degrees and a Master of Science in Nursing, joined the Canadian Forces midway through her studies toward a Bachelor of Nursing in 1985. She currently divides her time between clinical duties and policy-making. In a few months, however, she will prepare to head back to Kandahar to provide relief for two nursing colleagues who will be heading home on their mid-tour breaks.

Major Daniel wishes there were enough qualified operating room nurses in the Canadian Forces to allow her staff to work on three-month rather than six-month missions.