Warwick Navy nurse featured in new documentary series

Warwick Beacon ·

Warwick resident Lieutenant Ashley Flynn, NC, USN has spent almost a decade traveling the globe saving lives as a nurse in the United States Navy.

“However long I’m here, I want to have a positive impact on this world, so that it would be a better place for whoever’s behind me and whoever’s beside me,” she said in a video for a documentary series.

Flynn did not plan to become a nurse with the Navy. Born in Massachusetts, she moved to Rhode Island when she was 5 years old and lived in Exeter, North Kingstown and Narragansett before settling into Warwick during her junior year of high school. She lived in Warwick and worked at the Warwick Country Club while she earned her nursing degree at the University of Rhode Island.

Even though she did not spend much of her childhood in Warwick, she considers it to be home. “I feel like I’ve lived there my whole life,” she said.

She planned to stay in Rhode Island and work at Rhode Island Hospital after she graduated in 2009, but the onset of the financial recession changed her plans.

During the end of her junior year of college, Flynn was faced with the reality that because of the issues with the economy, she probably would not able to work near home because the hospitals could not afford to hire and train new nurses.

Some of her friends in nursing school were currently completing a program in the Navy and suggested to Flynn that she should join as well. She dismissed the idea at first, but after conducting some research of her own, decided to give it a try.

Flynn was the first in her family to graduate from college and the first to join the Navy. She joined in September 2009 and after treating cardiology critical care patients for about a year, she received news that she would be assigned to a Wounded Warrior unit, where she would need to care for casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan.

She said that she was devastated when she received this assignment because she knew of the physical and mental toll that nurses in the Wounded Warrior unit experienced. She was also disappointed because this position deviated from her original plan of moving up from her current position to an Intensive Care Unit, like many of the nurses in her position had done before.

“It was all about me back then, and I very quickly realized that it’s not about me,” she said. “My transition to this unit is for a reason and I’m here to help [her patients] get on to the next point in their lives.”

Flynn was inspired by the resilience she saw in the soldiers she treated.

“It was very humbling. I just said, ‘You know what, if they can keep going, then I can keep going,’” she said in the video.

It is not only inspiring for Flynn to see her patients’ resiliency in the hospital, but afterwards as well, as they live their lives. She said that it is rewarding to see her former patients do simple tasks like watch their child’s school play or go on fishing trips for veterans.

“To see them participate in life has been very inspirational for me,” she said.

However, Flynn also said that an ICU can be a devastating place to work, noting the nature of the unit and how illnesses and injury can flip lives upside down. She said that it is especially hard to see patients going through a difficult time during the holidays, since so many other people are celebrating and joyous during that time. She copes with these difficult days by having faith and trusting that she does the best that she can in each situation. At this point in her career, she said that she tries not to spend too much time thinking about or feeling guilty for these unfortunate situations.

She has been in the Navy for more than nine years, and in that time Flynn has treated patients in numerous continents and countries all over the world, including Malaysia, Australia, Singapore, Japan and many more. She even completed her master’s degree online in a remote island in the Indian Ocean named Diego Garcia, a military base.

During her time in the Navy she has also worked as a Flight Nurse, who is a healthcare professional that delivers pre-hospital care aboard an aircraft. More recently, she spent the first half of this year on deployment serving on the USNS Mercy, a Navy hospital ship, and she is now working as an Intensive Care Unit Staff and Charge Nurse at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, Calif.

Although she has traveled all over the world, she will never stop appreciating all of the treasures that can only be found in her hometown.

“There really is no place like home,” she said. “The farther out that I go in the world, the more I appreciate coming home to Don’s Pizza and Del’s and Dunkin Donuts…all the things that make Rhode Island great.”

Flynn spends a lot of her time on leave in Rhode Island, and visited Warwick a few weeks ago. She spends much of her time on leave relaxing on Block Island and visiting friends and family.

Flynn is featured in a documentary series on the Navy’s website titled “Faces of the Fleet,” which shares stories of real sailors in the Navy. She was contacted to be a part of the series when she was doing a campaign to recruit critical care nurses. According to Flynn, working in the ICU is a very important specialty in the Navy, but they have a difficult time recruiting and retaining participants, and while she was working to recruit nurses, she was offered to be a part of the series.

Throughout her time in the Navy, Flynn has been contacted by various people through her Instagram page about her experiences working in this field, and she has answered many questions from people interested in her career and her daily life as a nurse in the Navy. Since the video of her for “Faces of the Fleet” has been released, she has had some more people reach out to her.

In response to the attention she has received, she said that it feels nice to be able to represent such a special group of people who do very important work every day. More information and the video about her journey as a nurse in the Navy can be found at navy.com/faces-fleet-ep-08-lifeline.