Military nursing research: translation to disaster response and day-to-day critical care nursing

Where to begin? How do you identify nursing care requirements for military operations, disaster, and humanitarian response, and how do you modify care under these unique conditions? This article presents a framework for identifying areas of critical care nursing that are performed on a day-to-day basis that may also be provided during a contingency operation, and discusses how that care may be changed by the austere conditions associated with a contingency response. Examples from various disasters, military operations, and military nursing research are used to illustrate the use of this framework. Examples are presented of how the results of this military nursing research inform disaster nursing and day-to-day critical care nursing practice.