Interview with Robert Stambaugh-Social Change in the Military and Medical World, Hist 150 Spring 2024, Conducted by Cameron Stambaugh, March 17, 2024.
Overview to Social Change Interview:
The world is in a constant state of change. Things are happening everyday that socially affect people on a large or personal level. One of Robert’s biggest accomplishments in his time in the military. He served in the Marines and the Navy. He expresses how military experience has shifted, military service used to be a common experience shared amongst many Americans. Many valuable lessons and things that shaped Robert as a person he credits to the military. Robert expresses how he finds the decrease of people who have served upsetting. He expresses his gratitude for his experiences and wishes everyone could share this experience.
Covid-19 swept through emergency rooms all over the country. Working in an emergency room is a high stress environment. When Covid-19 swept through the world, it severely impacted hospitals everywhere. Due to the quickness Covid came and spread, ERs were not equipped with adequate resources or supplies. Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) would be worn multiple times in a row due to shortages, this severely decreases the effectiveness of the PPE. Rooms were overflowing and beds filled the hallways. Politics also played a large role in shaping people’s perspective surrounding the pandemic and the vaccine. Many young people lost their lives to Covid-19 because they did not believe Covid was real and refused to get the vaccine. After Covid-19 became more controlled, and the number of cases began decreasing there was a lasting impact felt in the ER. Many nurses had left or were leaving. Before the pandemic many ERs were already struggling with understaffing, but the pandemic streamlined this issue into an extreme. After fighting the pandemic on the front lines Robert decided to retire from medicine in 2022.
Biography:
This is an interview of Robert Stambaugh by his daughter Cameron Stambaugh. Robert grew up in Florida and enlisted into the Marines after graduating highschool and served for four years in elite reconnaissance units. He developed his interest in medicine while serving with the Marines. After getting out of the Marines, he attended the University of Florida as a pre-med student. After graduating from UF with a degree in Microbiology and Cell Science. He was commissioned as an Ensign (first rank as officer in the Navy). He studied medicine at the Uniformed Services University, School of Medicine (USU) in Bethesda, MD. USU is a federally funded medical school to train physicians to serve in the armed services. He attended USU due to his interest in returning to the military and medicine. He graduated from medical school in 1992 and completed an internship in general surgery at the Naval Medical Center in Portsmouth, VA.
He then attended the Undersea Medicine Course at the Naval Undersea Medical Institute in Groton, CT. He graduated from Naval Undersea Medical Institute as a Diving Medical Officer and then was assigned to the Naval Special Warfare Group TWO at Little Creek Naval Base in January of 1994. He was responsible for providing medical care to SEAL Teams TWO, FOUR, and EIGHT. In 1997 he returned to the Naval Medical Center in Portsmouth, VA to complete his residency in Emergency Medicine. He graduated residency in 2000 and stayed at the Naval Medicine Center as an attending physician in the emergency department. From 2004-2007 he practiced Emergency Medicine at Camp Lejeune Naval Hospital in North Carolina. From 2006-2009 he was assigned to the Joint Special Operations Command, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. In 2007 he returned to Portsmouth, VA. He retired from the United States Navy in October, 2009. While on active duty he deployed to Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003 and Iraq in 2008 post 9/11.
After retiring from the Navy he went to work full time at Chesapeake Regional Medical Center as an Emergency Physician. During this time he also was employed by Vigilint Expeditionary Solutions. In 2022 he retired from medical practice at Chesapeake Regional, and deployed to East Africa with Vigilint. Vigilint had a contract with the US government to provide medical support to Special Operation Units in Africa. He now spends his time walking the dog, playing piano, and enjoying retirement.
Research:
Naval Special Warfare Command:
Mission Statement- “PROVIDE MARITIME SPECIAL OPERATIONS FORCES TO CONDUCT FULL SPECTRUM OPERATIONS, UNILATERALLY OR WITH PARTNERS, TO SUPPORT NATIONAL OBJECTIVES” (Naval Special Warfare Command).
The Naval Special Warfare command is an elite group that trains individuals in warfare in maritime and riverine environments. It was commissioned on April 16th, 1987. NSW focuses to train individuals in five areas; Unconventional warfare, Direct Action, Special Reconnaissance, Foreign Internal Defense, and combating terrorism. The five areas of expertise are what make these groups of soldiers so elite.
Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences:
The Uniformed Services University trains students to become part of healthcare professionals and researchers. Those who complete their schooling here join the military services and the Public Health Service. USU provides students with unique experiences and the opportunity of a lifetime. USU was established in 1972 by Congress, after Nixon signed the Uniformed Services Health Professionals Revitalization Act of 1971. This act was focused on creating a Defense Department medical school. In 1976, the first class began their schooling. Since being founded USU has continued to grow in buildings and opportunities.
References:
NSW, www.nsw.navy.mil/. Accessed 09 Apr. 2024.
“Remember, Search, and Share Your Voice Conversations.” Otter Voice Meeting Notes,
otter.ai/u/j9dIqFx4wKWoOR5QC6yaEWDigq8?tab=chat. Accessed 09 Apr. 2024.
US Naval Special Operations Forces,
irp.fas.org/agency/dod/socom/sof-ref-2-1/SOFREF_Ch4.htm#:~:text=NAVSPECWARCOM
%20ORGANIZATION,of%20fleet%20and%20national%20operations. Accessed 09 Apr.
2024.
USUHS, Military Readiness, History, www.usuhs.edu/military-readiness/history. Accessed 09 Apr.
Overview:
The interview was conducted in person using voice memo on the iphone. The interview was conducted over spring break, so I was at home with my dad. This made it relatively simple to set the interview up. Transcribing the audio with Otter ai was extremely helpful. There were edits that needed to be made, due to wrong words being transcribed.
Transcript:
Cami Stambaugh: 0:00
Hi, my name is Cami Stambaugh, and I will be interviewing my father, Robert Stambaugh. I chose to interview him because of his experience in the military and in the medical field. And this is him.
Robert Stambaugh: 0:12
I’m Rob Stambaugh. I am 62 years old and I am Cameron’s father. I was born in July 26 1961.
Cami Stambaugh: 0:22
Okay, so I’m going to start with some questions. So, first, what would you say sparked your interest in medicine? How did you get into medicine?
Robert Stambaugh: 0:32
So when I was in the Marines, from 1979 to 1983, I was with an Elite Reconnaissance unit. And during the summertime, we would have a doctor come down, who’s a Navy Reservist, and train us in medicine. So he was a Navy Reservist from the University of Cincinnati. And every summer he spent two weeks with us at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. His name was Mel Otten, and he was an attending physician at that residency program in Cincinnati. So that initially got me interested in medicine.
Cami Stambaugh: 1:06
Can you discuss after the Marines, your schooling and your residency?
Robert Stambaugh: 1:12
So I got out of the Marine Corps in October of 1983, and then eight months later started at the University of Florida, as a pre med student in 1984. Studying all typical pre med classes, Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, that sort of thing. While I was there, I learned about a military medical school that was at the Bethesda Naval Hospital campus, and its goal was to train physicians for military service. So I applied to that school in addition to several other schools, and was ultimately accepted. In 1988, I graduated from pre-med at the University of Florida, and that August, started my medical school at the Uniformed Services University at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center, so I went through four years of medical school, graduating in May of 1992.
I initially planned on being a surgeon, and so I was assigned to the Naval Hospital at Portsmouth, Virginia, and I did a surgical internship from 1992. June of 92, to June of 93, and once I graduated from my surgical internship, I was sent to Groton, Connecticut, to the Naval Undersea Medical Institute. There I studied Undersea Medicine for six months, learning how to take care of divers, learning how to take care of submarine crew. They actually sent us to Panama City, Florida to the Naval Dive School, where we spent several months learning to dive including scuba and then hardhat diving and also learn medicine to take care of divers and how to run a recompression chamber.
When I finished that, in late December of 1993, I was then assigned to the SEAL teams at Little Creek, Virginia, near Norfolk, the Naval Special Warfare group TWO under Naval Special Warfare group TWO we had SEAL teams TWO, FOUR, EIGHT, and SEAL Delivery Vehicle team to and our job was to provide medical care to the seals and also to the divers of these units. While I was assigned there, that was sent to El Salvador, I was sent to Thailand and I did a brief trip to Belarus as well, one of the former Soviet republics. Finishing that assignment in September of 1997, I returned to the Naval Medical Center in Portsmouth, Virginia for a residency in Emergency Medicine. I was there for three years, graduating residency in 2000. And then I stayed on for two more years as an attending physician in the Department of Emergency Medicine. From there so after a two year assignment at the Naval Medical Center Portsmouth, I went back to the operational Navy, I was assigned to the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, in Dam Neck, Virginia, again, taking care of SEALs and divers. From that job, I went to the Naval Hospital Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and I was there for three years, working in the Emergency Department and also as the Head of the Marine Department for one year. I left Naval Hospital Camp Lejeune in 2007, and was transferred back to the Naval Medical Center, Portsmouth, Virginia. I then retired from the Navy in 2009.
Cami Stambaugh: 4:40
So now I’m going to ask you, did things change in the military for you after 9/11 occurred?
Robert Stambaugh: 4:46
So a good question. I was assigned to the Naval Medical Center at Portsmouth, Virginia, as an attending physician in the emergency department, when 911 occurred. It was after that, that we were going to send a ship up from Baltimore, the Naval Ship ,Comfort, which was a hospital ship that was going to be deployed to New York City to help with the casualties from 9/11. Unfortunately, there were not enough survivors to actually take care of due to the nature of that event. So subsequent to that, I was deployed to Afghanistan, the first time in 2002. And then again, in 2003, into 2004. Basically, supporting the Operational Forces, and some of our Special Operations Forces that were deployed to that Country. In 2008, I was then deployed to Iraq, and I was assigned to a Special Operations Unit there, where I would accompany the Assault Forces on some of their missions, and help care for any casualties that might happen.
Cami Stambaugh: 5:58
Well, thank you for your service. Now, I’m gonna get more into your experience as an emergency physician, so could you describe the environment and atmosphere of working in the emergency room, and how that might have differed from being like in the military, and then also in the civil world.
Robert Stambaugh: 6:17
So I think in the Navy the Military emergency departments, was was fairly similar to civilian hospitals. Basically, same job taking care of emergencies and providing medical care to the dependents and Active Duty Military personnel. People in the Military on that side tend to be younger and healthier, so not quite as sick. When I retired from the Navy in 2009, I went to work full time in a civilian emergency department, and the patients were much sicker, much older, oftentimes from nursing homes and that kind of thing, so it was different from that perspective.
Cami Stambaugh: 6:55
Okay, well, now that we discussed how the hospital was Pre-Pandemic, I would like to get into COVID-19, and kind of you know, how that shaped your experience as a physician in the emergency room. So could you describe your initial feelings and thoughts at the beginning of the pandemic.
Robert Stambaugh: 7:12
So before the pandemic occurred, emergency departments throughout the United States really, were basically overwhelmed and understaffed, and that was before the Pandemic occurred. That’s been a problem for for years. When the Pandemic occurred, it just kind of crushed the entire system. When it first started in May of 2020, for us, we set aside 12 beds for COVID-19 patients, and we felt that that was going to be adequate. We had a total of 50 beds in the emergency department. Within months, the entire 50 beds of the emergency department was almost entirely COVID. We were working every day, with goggles and scrubs, and masks, and gloves. We were wearing masks called N95s, which were for virus filtration. They’re extremely uncomfortable oftentimes, tearing our skin up and leaving rashes. Initially, we didn’t have enough protective gear, and the N95s masks that were supposed to be worn one time, we were having to wear for four or five days in a row, and I’m not even sure they were even effective at that point in time. Fortunately, I did not get COVID, and none of my colleagues and emergency department got COVID, but we did have nurses get COVID, and we actually had a nurse die in our hospital, who had got it from a patient. So that really was quite a quite a change. Unfortunately, now that COVID has kind of passed, the overcrowding has continued, because a lot of nurses retired or went to different jobs after the initial pandemic, so emergency departments continue to be understaffed and overwhelmed, unfortunately.
Cami Stambaugh: 8:57
And how do you think politics at the time affected people’s ideas in views of COVID-19?
Robert Stambaugh: 9:04
Well, I think early on, there was a lot of denial-ism, about COVID About how dangerous it was. I was watching the data coming out of Italy, before it even got to this Country, and in Italy, in one short period of time, they had 150 doctors die from COVID, and so we were pretty scared about that and I wasn’t sure that I was even going to survive COVID. At the time, I was taking medications that would have made me more susceptible, and I was concerned that I might get COVID and not survive it and unfortunately, we had politicians in office at the time that were downplaying it, and so we were having patients come in sick and dying from COVID that refused to believe that it even existed. In addition to that, once the vaccines were available, we had people refusing to get vaccinated, and it was quite sad because people were coming in dying of COVID unnecessarily because they were refusing the vaccine.
Cami Stambaugh: 10:00
So how did being an Emergency Physician during COVID-19 affect when you decided to retire?
Robert Stambaugh: 10:09
So I retired in September of 2022, and so at that point, we’d had COVID going for two and a half years, we initially had the first COVID come through and early 2020 and then 2021. In July, we got the Delta variant, which was quite a bit more dangerous and was actually killing people more quickly. And then in early 2022, we got Omicron, which was less dangerous, but much easier to spread and was still causing a lot of deaths. By the end of 2022, I was pretty much over it. Particularly, just watching people die unnecessarily,particularly the unvaccinated people, I was watching 45 year olds come in, who didn’t even believe COVID was a thing,and then they were they were dying in three or four days. So at the end of 2022, I was able to retire. Fortunately, financially, I was able to retire. And quite honestly, I just had enough. I think if it hadn’t been for COVID, I might have worked, you know, a few more years, but COVID just made life in the emergency department kind of miserable. And even if we weren’t taking care of COVID patients, the effects of COVID had caused such severe understaffing and lack of resources for the emergency department that it was just just miserable, and I decided it was time for me to retire.
Cami Stambaugh: 11:40
Okay, so now to kind of wrap things up, I would just like to get your view on any social change you’ve seen, especially with your experience in the military and as a doctor.
Robert Stambaugh: 11:50
I think that obviously, there there’s more polarization. We hear a lot about that. When I first went in the military 1979, it was only four years after the Vietnam War had ended, and the draft had ended probably four or five years before that. So at the time, military service was kind of a universal for most Americans, at least American males in the 60s and early 70s. When I went to Basic Training in 1979, I was a volunteer, and it was the beginning of the All Volunteer Force, and I think unfortunately, since military service is no longer a universal amongst most Americans, we’ve kind of lost that bond. I remember very distinctly being in boot camp at Parris Island, and meeting people that became close friends of mine that I would not have liked, had I met them outside of the Military. When I was in high school growing up, I didn’t like people with long hair, I didn’t like people who smoked pot, etc. And then I found out that my best friend in boot camp had long hair and had been smoking all kinds of weed as a civilian, but I know that because they shaved everybody’s heads off and so nobody had any hair, we’re all the same. I took that as a lesson, and unfortunately, 40 years later, I think that we’re even more polarized. Now, Americans don’t have military service as a shared experience, and I think that’s unfortunate. And I was also kind of surprised when I actually left military service in 2009, I had never been around anybody other than the military since I was 18 years old, and I retired when I was 47. And when I went into civilian practice, very few people that I associated with had ever, ever served. And I found that quite a quite a shock, honestly. And, you know, they didn’t care what I’ve done in the military, it was totally foreign to them, and they just didn’t even want to hear about it. So it was quite an interesting adjustment, and, you know, ultimately spending 13 years in private practice. So I think it was, it was quite a change.
Cami Stambaugh: 12:03
All right, to wrap things up. Do you have any last words or any advice for anybody listening?
Robert Stambaugh: 13:41
Well, I think talking to you and people your age specifically, I think it’s really important to realize just how short life is. And really the things that matter are the other people that you have relationships with, and the people that you care about and care about you. Unfortunately, my career for the past 40 some odd years, was marked by a lot of people dying, both in the military in training, accidents and in combat and Iraq and Afghanistan and other places. I witnessed a lot of a lot of death. And then of course, in the emergency department that is almost our job, people coming in by ambulance that are dead or dying. So I had a very interesting perspective, seeing that, and it just makes you realize that you never know how much time you have left. And you never know when it’s your time to die. And so it’s super important to kind of nurture those relationships in your life and make sure the people that you love know you love them, and make sure that you have no regrets. I’ve always tried to do everything that I want to do. So that when my time came, that I would have no regrets about how I lived my life. I think that’s that’s it. I mean, it’s later than you think.
Cami Stambaugh: 15:49
Okay, well, thank you for sharing.