Enlist an Army of Medical Pros at Womack Army Medical Center
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Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, regardless: If you are eligible for military health care, Womack Army Medical Center will take care of you.
“Our hospital serves a nine-county, 40-mile radius around Fort Bragg. We are a large hospital that takes care of about 125,000 military-based beneficiaries, which makes us somewhat unusual,” says Col. Terry Walters, commander of the Womack Army Medical Center.
Col. Walters is somewhat unusual in her own right. A physician specializing in internal medicine and geriatrics, she was in the first class of women who graduated from the U.S. Military Academy [West Point] in 1980.
“The Womack center has several missions, and one of its most important right now is that about three times a week, we receive combat-wounded soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan,” she says. “They are air-transported to Fort Bragg, and we help them in any way we can.”
Besides wounded troops, Walters says the hospital accommodates patients “from cradle to grave.”
“By that I mean that there are about 10 babies born here each day, and we take care of military retirees for their entire lives,” she says. “If I was to summarize our main duties, it would be PB cubed – primary care, babies, brains and bones. The brains portion of our mission deals with behavioral health and mild traumatic brain injuries, and bones deals with orthopedics.”
In the case of orthopedics, Walters says the XVIII Airborne Corps and the 82nd Airborne Division stationed at Fort Bragg often have training sessions that involve jumping out of planes, which can occasionally lead to bone injuries.
“Womack also features a full spectrum of specialty care such as hematology/oncology, pulmonary, internal medicine, cardiology, cardiac cath lab, intensive care unit, neonatal intensive care unit and a surgical ward,” Walters says.
Besides treating patients, the Womack center trains doctors, nurses and medics who will eventually deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan. The hospital also makes sure that all troops and U.S. Department of Defense civilians who are departing from Fort Bragg are medically ready to deal with the austere conditions in the Middle East.
“We don’t want someone going over to Iraq with a medical condition that we hadn’t diagnosed, only to be air-evacuated back to the United States. That wouldn’t make sense,” Walters says. “Our job is to help make sure that the people who deploy are combat-ready. Medicine is our business, and we are good at what we do.”
Story by Kevin Litwin
Photo by Ian Curcio
