05/26/2026
✨Student Spotlight✨
My name is Brietta Glover, and I am a third-year nursing student as well as a Midshipman in the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) at Vanderbilt University. I recently had the opportunity to participate in a Field Training Exercise (FTX) at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina, where I served as the Nurse Option to treat and care for the Marines while shadowing the Navy Hospital Corpsmen.
At the beginning of nursing school, our professors taught us the importance of hand hygiene and safety precautions, as these are some of the measures nurses can take to help patients progress and not decline in care. However, being placed in a setting with limited medical supplies, brown recluses, a boiling sun, and harsh field conditions was different from the lab or hospital environment, requiring me to think of alternative ways to implement what I have learned in school into field nursing.
The types of injuries we treated were minor but required quick action and high-intensity response. We treated small lacerations, rope burns on the hands, ankle sprains, and heat-related casualties. A mindset in the Marine Corps is to push through discomfort and pain, so some do not always seek help when needed. This made it essential for the medical team to remain vigilant and know when to stop training for an individual, especially since heat casualties were the most life-threatening conditions we were likely to encounter.
I am grateful for the opportunity to serve and care for Marines, whose needs differ greatly from the typical scenarios encountered in nursing school. I am especially thankful to my Belmont nursing professors for equipping me with the knowledge to assess and intervene effectively, and to my ROTC unit for providing me with this invaluable opportunity to apply those skills to the field.
