Hope in their hands

When 2020 was nominated as the International Year of the Nurse, no one knew how apt that would be, as COVID-19 wreaked havoc around the globe. Bronwyn Philips honours our nurses who bring healing, comfort and care.

- Bronwyn Philips

Jenny Lumsden Mending lives while mortars fall

At the end of a four-month deployment at a US military field hospital in Iraq in 2005, Jenny Lumsden was given a certificate. “It was to acknowledge I’d survived 100 mortar attacks,” the intensive care nurse and Senior Consultant to Air Force Services laughs. Embedded with an Australian team of specialists with the US military, Jenny worked in a tent hospital north of Baghdad preparing patients to evacuate to Germany. “I worked from midday to midnight,” says Jenny, 54. “Sometimes I’d be asleep, the sirens would go off, and the ground shake.”

The team treated American service personnel and civilians caught in the crossfire. “We looked after an Iraqi family whose house had been grenaded by locals, and two children burned,” she says.

Returning to work at The Royal Melbourne Hospital Intensive Care Unit, Jenny missed her colleagues back in Iraq. “You’ve shared that experience. Even though it’s 12-hour shifts, six days a week, I felt like I’d deserted them,” she says. “Being part of the air force is like a second family.”

Nursing in conflict and disaster zones is challenging and exhausting. Some, too traumatised to continue, leave Defence; others, like Jenny, use their expertise to make a difference. In a 30-year career in air force and civilian nursing, Jenny led teams in East Timor and in 2015 was the first nurse and first woman to be appointed Director General Health Reserves – Air Force. In 2005, after a second bombing in Bali left 20 dead and 130 injured, Jenny cared for Australian survivors airlifted to Darwin.