MMT 2007 Volume: 11 Issue: 7 (October)
World War I, for instance, required an expansion from 80 to 2,500 beds and the construction of dozens of temporary barracks and other buildings, notes command historian Sherman L. Fleek in his account of the center’s history, “A Century of Service: 1909-2009.” More recently, the flow of injured from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the medical center revealed facilities sorely in need of repair and a disconnect between military and veteran care administration that new commanders, including the subject of this issue’s Q&A, Major General Carla G. Hawley-Bowland, have worked hard to fix.
Sometimes when an organization has been around such a long time, its significance may come to be taken a bit for granted. Certainly the new Walter Reed National Military Medical Center under construction in Bethesda, Md., and the Community Hospital at Fort Belvoir, Va., promise better facilities that should help nurses, doctors, scientists and administrators improve treatment and rehabilitation of the wounded.
But in the history of the center, the upcoming move by 2011 is just the latest in a continual move toward better care. As noted in this issue’s special section highlighting the work at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, specialists have made great strides in developing prosthetics, sometimes just in small but meaningful ways, as well as in treating post-traumatic stress disorder and other injuries of war.
The center has served many people over the years—Generals John Pershing and Douglas MacArthur and President Dwight Eisenhower are among those who spent their last days there. But in its history and for the future, the work by Walter Reed staff is in the main simply an effort to make any time spent by patients at the center just a small portion of their long, valued lives.
Ted McKenna, Editor This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it |
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