A WORLD APART

5 Minutes With Brig. Gen. William Bester, on Army nursing (Bree LeMaire, Nurseweek, 1/30/04)

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The Army Nurse Corps has been a successful nursing organization for 103 years now. We were the first nursing organization to move to a baccalaureate entry-level requirement and have had that requirement for more than 25 years.

We place a high priority on education, supporting more than 100 nurses a year to attend graduate school, fully funded while collecting their salary at the same time. We additionally fund five or six nurses a year for doctoral education.

The Army Nurse Corps, along with the other services, has received $53 million in the past 10 years to focus on nursing research. The quality of care our nurses provide is reflected in the fact that Army hospitals, on average, score higher on their JCAHO surveys than our civilian counterparts. Our wonderful nursing professionals not only are required to perform excellent nursing care in our hospitals in a peacetime environment, but are also frequently asked to take care of severely traumatized soldiers in austere environments like Iraq and Afghanistan. An Army nurse can best be described by our motto-"Ready, Caring, Proud."