A physician talks about being on the front lines in Iraq:

She arrived in Iraq in January 2004 to find a one-room command station that looked like it had been shelled, and a team of fresh-faced medics just out of training instead of the seasoned long-timers she expected.

“Some of them barely knew how to start an IV,” Sweeney said. “So we spent afternoons training. . . . Everybody learned how to do IVs, even the drivers.

“I really had no idea what to expect when I was deployed,” Sweeney said. “I had to make a lot of decisions on the ground about patients. It has helped me in professional development. A lot of the time I had to make a critical decision.”

While the medical team’s first duty was to treat American soldiers and soldiers of allied forces, they often treated local Iraqis and civilians from other countries working for private firms.

The range of injuries was broad.

“It was basically first-level care and trauma stabilization,” Sweeney said. Sicker patients were stabilized then transported, usually by helicopter, to higher-level care.

She and the medics treated a lot of dehydration, infectious diseases, sports and musculoskeletal injuries, including back problems. The heavy protective gear caused back strain. So did the pounding their bodies took during travel from place to place. Soldiers would get out of their Humvees and twist their ankles, she said.

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