For Edna Boyd-Davis, the U.S. Army Reserves has been the best place to be a nurse - and an officer.
In a recent ceremony at the U.S. Army Reserve Headquarters at Fort McPherson, Boyd-Davis was promoted to colonel, a rank just below brigadier general.
As chief nurse in charge of Reserves Unit 3297, and now as a colonel, the Riverdale resident oversees 150 nurses whose mission includes filling vacancies at hospitals across the country when other nurse reservists are called to active duty.
It's a mission Boyd-Davis has filled personally, often leaving her family for months at a time to serve.
Her involvement in the Army Reserves spans more than 20 years, but she began her nursing career in Florida, graduating from Florida A&M University with a bachelor's degree in nursing. She stayed in Florida working as a staff nurse, charge nurse and a child health nurse before enlisting in 1981.
"I got into the nursing reserves as a captain at a combat support hospital," she said. Her unit's designation was at the "back end of the battle theater in the States."
While medical nursing units deployed in areas like Baghdad operate directly on the battlefields much like a M.A.S.H. unit, her unit cared for the families of soldiers and soldiers when they returned to the United States.
First stationed in Jacksonville, she worked in med/surg pediatrics in the combat support hospital, served as a nursing instructor at Bethune- Cookman College and provided primary care as a nurse for a local juvenile detention center.
Multitasking is a skill she has honed in the Reserves. Throughout her more than 20 years as a reserve officer, Boyd-Davis has juggled faculty, reserve and hospital positions.
"One of things the Army does for you is train you to think of diversity in terms of what you can do, as well as how to lead people," she said. "I learned how to help others obtain the goals that they're pursuing.
"The Army has given me a great deal of support and training in terms of leadership and managerial and organizational skills. And you can make the application of those principles [important] at every walk of your life."
Keeping her nurses ready to leave for duty at a moment's notice is part of her job, and something Boyd-Davis has experienced. In 1990, she was sent to the Fort Sill, Okla., combat hospital as part of the Persian Gulf War activation of the Army Reserves.
"I had to get a live-in housekeeper, and I had two teenagers - one in 12th grade and one in the ninth," she said. "I was gone for a year."
The experience was hard.
"I had to be structured," she said. "But it taught me things that I could use and apply in raising them.
"And it taught me flexibility - how to take an unforeseen circumstance that may appear troublesome and work through that. It builds character and endurance."
Boyd-Davis believes nurses should consider the Army Reserves as a way to further their careers.
"I would encourage them to pursue a professional degree in nursing at the BSN level, and from there apply for a direct commission to enter the armed forces as an officer," she said.