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Airman helps run Afghan medical clinic

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Rachel Martinez
  • 455th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan (AFPN) --  Five days a week, Afghan men, women and children make their way toward Forward Operating Base Salerno in Khost Province, Afghanistan, to receive medical care. The local national medical clinic at FOB Salerno is just one of such clinics run by Task Force Med Airmen and Soldiers throughout Afghanistan.

The clinic itself is a shining example of Americans working with Afghans to help other Afghans. Afghan doctors working at the American base assess the patients themselves, with American doctors there to assist and prescribe any medication or schedule any necessary procedures. Staff Sgt. Pauline Hoyla, an aeromedical service craftsman deployed from Scott Air Force Base, Ill., oversees administration of the clinic.

"My favorite part is talking to the locals and the doctors, and working together as a group," said the San Diego, Calif., native. "It's been great. I've learned a lot from them, and hopefully they learned some stuff from me too."

Many of the clinic patients were previously treated at the Salerno hospital for trauma; others are referrals from the Khost hospital. The clinic staff designates certain days for family medicine, pediatrics and general medicine. On average, they see five to seven patients a day.

When not overseeing the clinic, she assists in the EMT trauma bay stocking shelves and passing out supplies. For someone whose medical background includes three and a half years in the obstetrician/gynecological clinic and a short stint in an ambulatory clinic, working in the trauma bay is an eye-opening experience.

"It's really different, clinic work and emergency medicine," said Sergeant Hoyla, who is on her first deployment. "After a couple of days you watch one, do one, teach one. That's what happened here. For the stuff that I wasn't really comfortable doing, that I haven't done enough back home, I would watch them at first, then the second time I would do it. It would come smoothly after that."

Sergeant Hoyla said she will never forget a trauma experience that happened on Aug. 18, Afghanistan Independence Day, when a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-packed vehicle just outside FOB Salerno.

"It was crazy. Everybody was running around," she recalled. "When it is happening, you try to not think about it, and just do your job, and just do what you are supposed to do."

While trauma work can be physically and mentally draining, the reward comes in knowing you helped save a life, Sergeant Hoyla said.

"When everything dies down you are like, 'hey, I saved someone today,'" she said. "Sometimes you are in awe about everything.  Did I really do this?  I helped this person's life?  It's a good feeling."

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