Keeping the RAF fighting fit in the desert: Sgt Williams
From pilots to nurses, the Royal Air Force are currently putting their new F-35 Lightning jets through their paces in the harsh deserts of Nevada, USA. As with every deployment, medical cover is essential.
Exercise Red Flag is a two-week advanced aerial combat training exercise held in the USA — aiming to offer realistic air-combat training for military pilots and their crews.
Here’s what it’s like to be a RAF Nurse deployed alongside the flying units:
Alongside medics and doctors, I’m one of the nurses providing medical care during the exercise here in the USA.
Every morning we run drop-in sessions where anyone who has any issues can pop in and see us for an assessment.
Fortunately we’ve not been very busy so far which is good as it means our units are fit and healthy!
The biggest benefit of having us deploy alongside the units here is providing a Primary Care function, meaning that usually we can prevent any issues becoming worse for our Airmen and women, keeping them fighting fit.
I’ve been a registered nurse for seven years now and I’ll likely deploy to the Falkland Islands this year or next year.
This is my first overseas exercise I’ve provided cover for, one of the great things about this is being able to mix with nationalities and trades that I wouldn’t normally while on duty back home in the UK.
Out here we’ve also got a trained physiotherapist who works with our aircrew to work out any issues they are having — again this is great to have to prevent injuries down the line.
It’s really important to have a nurse on deployments like this, our medics are great at working on the pre-hospital care but as a nurse I’m able to provide primary care like clinics and issue some medications they can’t, meaning the patients don’t necessarily need to see a doctor.
Exercise Red Flag concludes later this month after the first appearance of UK F-35 Lightning jets on the deployment for the Royal Air Force.
