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A Nurse With A Knack For Getting The Job Done

There’s never a dull moment in the life of former military nurse Jill Szymanski, RN, MS, CLNC, CHE. From the war-torn Persian Gulf to the coast of Italy, Jill’s career has spanned a broad range of duties and locales. To paraphrase Will Rogers, she never met a challenge she didn’t like.

It all began when, on a whim, Jill talked with a navy recruiter during a Career Day program at nursing school. Because she was intrigued by the travel, adventure, and opportunity for advanced education, Jill signed up to serve her country.

After completing officer indoctrination school, Jill headed to a hospital in Groton, Conn. Within two years, she was the only nurse on a 38-bed med/surg floor. “I quickly developed strong nursing skills,” she says. “The military has high standards of care.” While in Groton she also worked as an oncology nurse, one of her career’s saddest periods. “It was hard not to get emotionally attached to patients,” reflects Jill. “Many died. I still remember their names, faces, and families.”

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Then duty called—Jill was dispatched to the Persian Gulf. Nothing to date had prepared the nurse for wartime. She was one of 29 RNs stationed on the hospital ship USNS Comfort. Jill explains: “They loaded the ship in five days with pallets of supplies, food, and everything else necessary for the three-week trip. We unloaded everything, established a 1,000-bed ward, a critical care unit, a burn unit, and a mass casualty receiving area. We worked ’round the clock until the ship was ready.”

One particularly poignant incident will always live in Jill’s memory—an explosion in the boiler room on the USS Iwo Jima. Six sailors were rescued and brought to the Comfort. “That was traumatic,” Jill remembers sadly, “because I’d never dealt with massive burns before. We did everything we could, but unfortunately, we couldn’t save them.”

After eight and a half months on the Comfort, Jill returned home. Typically, military personnel need 18 months to five years to fully recover emotionally from wartime experiences. During that healing period, the navy selected Jill for a master’s degree program in trauma and critical care nursing, fulfilling her graduate-school dream.

Shortly after receiving her master’s degree, her other dream—that of travel and adventure—was fulfilled. “One of the jokes is that once the navy has sent you to school, you’re basically the ‘silver bullet’ [and] they’re going to shoot anywhere they want you in the world,” says Jill. She was “shot” to Sicily, to oversee an outpatient clinic while acting as an expert for critical-care patient traumas, and managing 16 physicians, corpsmen, and nurses.

Jill had one last tour of duty before resigning her commission as an assignment officer, where she was responsible for matching 1,000 junior nurses to appropriate naval jobs. How does she feel about her military career? “My parents taught me to serve others and not to think of yourself first,” says the patriotic nurse, “and that those with more should give more.” She believes all nurses should serve in the military, even for just one tour, to acquire invaluable knowledge, skills, and worldly experience.

These days, Jill is building her own business as a certified legal nurse consultant. She also works for Baptist Health in South Florida as a clinical performance improvement consultant.

Having lived through war, Jill is never bothered by bad days at work. She has a knack for getting the job done. “I was taught that I can handle any situation,” she says. “I see the problem, figure out the solution, and take action. The things I learned in the military are ingrained in me.”