Ep. 127: A CRNA’s Experience Being Deployed to Afghanistan

For most people, the decision to serve their country comes at young age, but for Michael Rieker, CRNA, DNP, FAAN, the decision came in his late-40s.

Rieker is the Chair of Academic Nursing at Wake Forest School of Medicine and felt the calling to serve his country so he signed up for the Army Reserve. That decision recently resulted in a deployment to Afghanistan to serve as part of a Golden Hour Offset Surgical Team (GHOST) and provide medical support for troops.

On today’s episode, we’ll talk with Rieker about his experience overseas and find out what those days were like. And how do you return to the calm of the classroom after having that experience of being involved in a military operation? This should be a really interesting conversation for any CRNA and we hope you enjoy.

We also want to thank Rieker again for his time and his service.

So as you get started on the episode, keep an ear out for these topics:

• How he got into the Army Reserves

• The Army moving to modular units to provide medical care.

• The training they provided the local Afghan medical staff

• What his role was in Afghanistan

• A first-hand account of the current state of operations in Afghanistan

• What would his typical day look like?

• How difficult was that transition back to the classroom after returning?

• The top things he’s learned from this experience

• What advice he’d give younger CRNAs that are considering a similar path.

Check it out the interview at the top of the page and use the timestamps to help you navigate through the many topics we discussed.

[2:14] – Welcome in our guest

[3:58] – Deployment to Afghanistan

[8:11] – How busy was he

[11:27] – Providing anesthesia to civilians  

[12:48] – Conditions overseas right now  

[14:47] – What a typical day looked like  

[17:06] – Transitioning back to real life  

[20:20] – Very limited connectivity on deployment

[21:02] – School while he was away

[22:52] – Top things he learned

[25:29] – Benefits of the military

[26:41] – Final thoughts

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