Photo By Petty Officer 1st Class Camilo E Fernan | Chief Hospital Corpsman Paula Barney, a recruit division commander, poses for a...... read more read more
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Meet HMC Paula Barney! Chief Barney is a #HospitalCorpsman currently working as a #recruitdivisioncommander at the Navy’s only #bootcamp
She had no intention to join back in 2000, but a friend’s prank, which involved giving Barney’s contact information to the Navy, resulted in her being contacted by a recruiter.
“What the Navy offered seemed enticing, so I decided to see what I could get. If they could get me something in the medical field, and college money with the Navy College Fund, then I would sign up.”
Young chief envisioned exotic travel while gaining experience in sterile hospitals or ship medical wings.
“They said, ’Hey, you’re going to the Marines.’ I felt like I got punched in the gut, because my goal or my job was going to ships and I could travel and see different things. I didn’t know corpsman worked with Marines until I got my orders to an FMS (Field Medical Service Support) unit.”
Barney’s first duty station was at #CampPendleton in sunny southern #California. She worked in the medical warehouse and participated in regular field exercises. She was close to her hometown of #Pacoima and loved visiting her family on the weekends. Chief also witnessed how things can quickly change.
“People were getting everything together and leaving within 48 hours of September 11. I had a chain of command that wanted to call me back to make sure the warehouse ran smooth, but I saw everybody around me deploying.”
Chief deployed to Iraq during her second assignment, as part of a Surgical Trauma Platoon (STP). She learned her trade in a way she never expected.
“It got me more hands-on with patient care, in a way I never thought I would, that a lot of corpsman don’t get. STP was not frontline, but the ones that received casualties and I’ve seen all that trauma.”
At 22 years old, Barney found herself in a woman’s chest cavity. The doctor was trying to find where the patient was bleeding from, but her heart kept stopping.
“My hands were literally around her heart. He had me grab her heart, pump it, to get that blood flow going through her.”
Barney’s deployment motivated her to stay in the Navy and use the leadership skills that she had gained to set the example for and take care of other Sailors.
“I'm glad it made me a person who I am that I could take stress and trauma like that, and be able to move forward and learn from it and hopefully teach others with it.
Now on her second tour as an RDC, Barney uses all her skills she learned from her deployments to help her with teaching the next generation of Sailors. One of the biggest points she stresses to her recruits is to pay attention to detail, because it can mean the difference between life or death.
“I always tell them that I, as a corpsman, especially in Iraq, giving narcotics and all these different medications to patients at once to help with pain and infection or whatever, that little decimal, that little point between numbers to tell you whether it's 1.5 or 15 milligrams, that makes a difference between helping that person or killing them.”
When working with female recruits, she takes a little extra time to mentor them, because she didn’t have a lot of female role models throughout her career.
“To see more women come in and trying to make a difference -- it brings joy to my heart to see it. I always emphasize with the female recruits: make a difference, do something, just don't sit back and let things go by.”
When she’s not focusing her time on training recruits, Barney likes to spend her time with her husband and three children, aged 18, 11, and 9. Typically big fans of going to the movie theater, the Barneys have had to adjust their cinematic experience to an at-home viewing experience, thanks to the coronavirus. But when the weather is cooperative, they all like to get outdoors and go on hikes.
As she nears retirement, she says she can’t wait to be able to experience the homebody kind of lifestyle and spending even more time with her family.
“I’m just looking forward to going to school and being a full-time mom support my husband through his career, because he still got more years than I do before he retires. So I’ll follow him around and help him out when I retire.”
#Hooyah HMC Barney!
And thanks for helping us close out our celebration of strong RTC Women for #WomensHistoryMonth
| Date Taken: | 03.31.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 03.31.2021 17:12 |
| Story ID: | 392772 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 157 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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