Featured Research Faculty: Catherine Wilson Cox

What research are you working on now?

My research “umbrella” focuses on nurse workforce issues, whether it is with military nurses, perioperative nurses, and/or military-affiliated nursing students. My current research funding supports the exploration of severe burn nursing care in large scale combat operations (LSCO).

Why is this work important?

In future conflicts, it is anticipated that we will be engaged across dispersed regions with limited transportation availability for rapid evacuation. This means that burn resuscitation and burn care will occur “in theater” for military service members who cannot be immediately evacuated, mirroring the burn care delivery provided to civilians who could not be evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan from 2001-2021. This prolonged casualty care model has not been described or reported in the literature from the nursing perspective.

What are the potential policy implications of your work?

Because we have experience in caring for civilian burn patients for extended or definitive burn care in the operational settings of Iraq and Afghanistan – since they could not be evacuated outside of their countries – we can document and apply lessons learned from their experiences to ensure that military nurses are prepared to provide prolonged casualty care to all burn patients in future LSCO.