Ambulance in the Sky

Flying over Flint Hills of Kansas in a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter, Cadet Claire Troshynski wasn’t just enjoying the view of Milford Lake. She was looking at her future office.

“I felt like I was in my place,” she recalled. “That’s where I wanted to be, and that’s what I wanted my job to be.”

Most college nursing students spend their clinicals on the ground. But Troshynski, a senior at Texas Christian University, has always sought a different vantage point. She completed the Air Force free fall program, earned her Army Air Assault badge, and now has her sights set on becoming an Army flight nurse who treats casualties in the sky.

“Seeing them land in these fields, I was like, ‘This is so cool. I want to be on a helicopter doing this in the middle of combat,’” Troshynski said of her flight with the 1st Infantry Division’s Combat Aviation Brigade. “It’s basically an ambulance in the sky.”

Troshynski is one of four Army ROTC cadets who voluntarily spent four weeks this summer at Irwin Army Community Hospital as part of the Nurse Summer Training Program. Alongside Cadets Jack Rebsch, Kasey Jacobs, and Perla Flores Aguirre, Troshynski chose to forgo a summer break to embed in an Army hospital. Their mission was to discover firsthand what it means to wear the uniform of an Army Nurse.

Troshynski started her ROTC journey in the Air Force but transferred to the Army midway through her freshman year. She said she wanted a career that was closer to the action.

“I wanted to be down in the dirt, doing the hard stuff,” she explained.

At IACH, she found that. In the Emergency Department, an Army patient arrived with a knife wound that left a flap of skin on his hand. When the patient realized Troshynski was a nursing student, he didn’t ask for a seasoned provider. He offered her the ultimate training experience.

“He said, ‘If you want to try it, this is your opportunity,’” Troshynski recalled. Guided by a physician assistant who walked her through the first stitch, Troshynski carefully sewed the skin back together. “It was cool just seeing that... it’s not something you'll ever do as a [civilian] nurse.”

Cadet Jack Rebsch, a National Guard cadet from the University of Cincinnati, had a similar experience. He found clinical autonomy at IACH to be a revelation.

“My clinical experience [in the civilian sector] is that I’ve been able to do very little,” Rebsch said. “Here, it felt like I could do a lot more outside the normal scope of a nursing student. I've done blood draws. I bagged a patient with oxygen. I inserted an oral airway.”

And for Cadet Kasey Jacobs of Baylor University, an “Army brat” whose parents were both Army officers, the NSTP rotation offered a psychological shift. Back at school, nursing students wear branded scrubs that mark them clearly as trainees. At IACH, Jacobs was issued standard hospital scrubs, blending in with the surgeons, CRNAs, and active-duty nurses.

“You fit in a lot more... there’s nothing about you that would say ‘student,’” Jacobs said. Looking in the mirror, the moment hit her. “It showed that all my hard work has come to this. I made it to something that I really wanted to do since I started college.”

That sense of belonging translated directly to her clinical confidence. Jacobs, who had never performed an IV insertion before arriving at Fort Riley, completed over a dozen during her four weeks.

Beyond clinical skills, the NSTP rotation provided immersion in Army culture and leadership.

Cadet Perla Flores Aguirre, a Lander University student who already serves in the Army Reserve as a Human Resources Specialist (42A), witnessed the culture of care on the Labor and Delivery floor. During one shift, she was impressed by how the civilian and Army staff supported a patient who endured a 24-hour labor before requiring a C-section.

“Just being there for the patient emotionally, even though, you know, there’s only so much you can do...I feel like that really stuck with me,” Flores Aguirre said. “Just seeing how they keep the patient calm and the family, and how they all work together. I thought that was really amazing.”

Troshynski also noticed that treating Army families requires a different kind of empathy. She noted how L&D nurses routinely asked expectant mothers about their support systems, anticipating the challenges of having a spouse deployed to places like Poland.

“I’ve never really heard that asked in a civilian hospital,” Troshynski said. “I think it's really cool that they care that much. These aren’t just your people that you come to work every day with... these people are your family when it’s the Army, and you should treat them that way.”

The cadets also saw firsthand that Army nurses are leaders first.

Troshynski marveled at officers like MAJ Lucy MacNamee, the Labor & Delivery Officer in Charge, who balanced administrative responsibilities with frontline compassion. She observed how MAJ MacNamee would check on her nurses, ask what they needed, and stepped into patient rooms to help.

As the four cadets pack their bags to return to their respective universities for their senior years, they leave with a distinct advantage over their peers.

Flores Aguirre hopes to specialize in Labor and Delivery. Rebsch is charting a path toward becoming a CRNA. Jacobs found her calling in the Operating Room. And Troshynski knows exactly what she needs to do to get back on a helicopter as an Enroute Critical Care Nurse, best known as Army flight nurse.

When they return to campus, they know they will face questions from civilian classmates who don't understand the demands of ROTC or military medicine. But as Cadet Jacobs noted, the sacrifices are a small price to pay for the mission ahead.

"Committing your life to the Army is very hard," Jacobs said. "But it's worth it, because I know what my job is going to look like. I already have my job, and I've already made a lot of connections. They don't get that."

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