MANSFIELD, Ohio—Joining the military was never on Staff Sgt. Natasha Grau’s radar, nor was obtaining a career in medicine. But after enlisting at the 179th Airlift Wing and serving in the Medical Squadron, she has no regrets. “I love it,” she said.
Grau is among approximately 60 airmen serving in the Medical Squadron at the 179th. As a medical technician, her duties include handling all of the airmen’s medical records, drawing blood and administering immunizations to the airmen.
“I had no intention of joining,” she said. “I was just coming as support for a friend who was considering joining. She told me, ‘If you do it, I’ll do it, so we decided to join.’”
Grau began her enlistment by serving in the Medical Squadron, though she had no interest in medicine. “I actually hated medical,” she said. “I loved math in school, so I wanted to do something in finance or marketing in college.”
She ended up attending The Ohio State University and earning a bachelor’s in speech and hearing.
The perks to being part of the Medical Squadron, she said, is all the face time she gets with fellow airmen. “We’re going to see everybody at some point, so I like getting that face to face time with people,” she commented.
Lt. Col. Troy Cramer, a medical administrative officer, said the Medical Squadron provides several inpatient services. “We’ve got a very small clinic here, but we have every discipline of medicine,” he noted. He said they have an optometry section, immunization section, dental section and a cadre of providers, including a cardiothoracic surgeon, who works at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.
“We do not do any treatment, per se. We will rely on the civilian provider–Blue Cross, Blue Shield, MedCentral–wherever they go to provide that treatment,” he said.
He explained, “The majority of the time is spent providing patient care to ensure that our members are medically ready to deploy.”
If airmen were to report that they were not feeling well, Cramer said they could visit the Medical Squadron for a second opinion before seeking treatment from their healthcare provider. “Our team has a great wealth of knowledge,” he said.
He noted, “We have a lot of professionals that practice medicine on the outside,” including doctors, dentists, optometrist, nurses, among others. He added, “We have a great diversity of personnel. We are pretty evenly split between officer and enlisted and between male and female.”
“If somebody gets injured, we do what we can to ensure that they get fixed as quickly as they can,” he said. Medical Squadron personnel manage injured airmen’s cases 24/7, he said, to make sure that they get the treatment they need.
He reiterated, “Everything that we do, for the most part, is ensuring that our population here on base is medically ready to go out the door if they needed to deploy somewhere.”
When the wing does deploy, he said, “There’s sometimes the need for a medical detachment or a medical contingent to go with that unit, so we will send whatever medical specialty is required. And in those settings, they are functioning in their full medical capacity, so if we’re sending over the surgeon, he is probably going to be doing surgery.”
Another aspect of their deployment involves humanitarian efforts, both within the local area and abroad. Their humanitarian work is part of innovative readiness training and serves as an opportunity for the airmen to maintain their skill sets, Cramer said.
“We want to maintain our own medical readiness to ensure that when we’re called upon, we have all of the skills and are current in our training,” added Cramer.
As a part of this training program, the airmen will provide a group of people will medical service, including dental treatment, optometry exams, immunizations, and so on.
In previous missions, they’ve partnered with the Ohio Department of Health and local health departments and targeted impoverished areas that lacked medical service, Cramer said. “We provided whatever medical care the patients may have needed, so if they needed immunizations, we did that,” he explained.
“Those are more of the rewarding missions that we do,” he commented.
Grau agreed. “Those are my favorite,” she said.
A couple years ago, Grau was part of a group that deployed to Hawaii for a humanitarian mission.
“I did not realize that there are so many homeless people in Hawaii; you don’t think of that when you think of Hawaii,” she said, noting, “We helped a lot of homeless people out and we also went to schools and gave kids vision exams. “It was cool to help them and see how happy they were about that.”
Editor’s Note: This is the seventh story in the “Embedded at the 179th” series.
“We want to maintain our own medical readiness to ensure that when we’re called upon, we have all of the skills and are current in our training,” added Lt. Col. Troy Cramer.
