Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton staff joined the Nurse Corps in celebrating their 108th birthday by attending a cake cutting ceremony May 13.

During the ceremony letters from Vice Adm. C. Forrest Faison, the U.S. Navy Surgeon General and Chief, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery and all Navy Medical Corps chiefs were read thanking the Nurse Corps for its outstanding contributions to the Navy.

"Our Navy nurses are scientists, teachers, researchers, providers and clinicians," said Faison. "They set the standard for military medicine and are essential to force health protection and readiness. I want to thank the exceptional men and women serving in our Nurse Corps for their sacrifice, their steadfast dedication, compassion and selfless service as they honor the sacred trust that has been placed in them."

The Navy Nurse Corps was established May 13, 1908 and in October of the same year the first nurses, later called "The Sacred Twenty," reported for duty at the Naval Medical School Hospital in Washington, D.C.

Today more than 4,000 active duty and reserve Navy nurses are serving in operational, humanitarian, and traditional missions on the home front and abroad. These men and women provide professional nursing care in peacetime and wartime under ordinary and extraordinary circumstances.

NHCP has 342 Navy and civilian nurses serving in a variety of roles. There are 132 military registered nurses, 145 Federal Civilian RNs, 33 contract RNs and two volunteer RNs. There are also 26 Federal Civilian Licensed Vocational Nurses and four contract LVNs. These nurses provide care to the hospital's beneficiaries in areas that include Medical Home Port (primary care), the Emergency Department, Occupational Health, the Ambulatory Procedure Unit, the Operating Room, Labor and Delivery, Postpartum, the Intensive Care Unit, Multi-Service Ward and the surrounding Branch Health Clinics.

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