No slow shift at ‘Baghdad ER’
Ibn Sina Hospital staff treats troops, Iraqis quickly and efficiently
By Helen Hu, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Friday, May 4, 2007
BAGHDAD — <snip>
Ibn Sina Hospital. Nicknamed “Baghdad ER,” it’s one of the busiest trauma centers in Iraq. Patients come in by helicopter, by tank, by Humvee. They walk, limp, are brought in by stretcher.
The emergency room generally is warned about a minute — or less — before the new patients start to arrive. Beds, IV tubes, drugs and bandages are readied. When the patients roll in, orderly chaos takes over. The sights are not for the faint of heart.
“The amount of trauma that we see, nothing can truly prepare you for it,” said Capt. Shane Baugh, 36, a tall, soft-spoken nurse from Pineville, W.Va. “You see legs blown off, arms blown off, large holes in the chest and abdomen. What we see in a month, they
will see in a year. One of our patients is worse than anything they’ll see.”
On a recent day, an Iraqi interpreter was brought in whose legs had been blown off below the knee. Delirious, he screamed and writhed as a team of people worked to ease his pain and calm him down. He was later brought upstairs to the operating room to have his legs cleaned, the dead tissue removed and the wounds dressed.
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http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=45588
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