Mr. FLOOD. All right. I intend to ask him about that. That is one of the 11 things I want to ask the Surgeon General, but I would like, at this point in the record, a statement made by the commanding officer of nurses. General COLLINS. Very well, sir. Mr. FLOOD. Instead of the Surgeon General. I think she rates a statement. These are important units and I do not want them submerged. (The material requested follows:) STATEMENT BY COL. MARGARET HARPER, CHIEF, ARMY NURSES GENERAL AND MORALE With the passage of the Army reorganization bill in 1901, the Nurse Corps became a part of the Army Medical Service. With the enactment of the ArmyNavy Nurse Act (Public Law 36) Army nurses were authorized a permanent commissioned status. Temporary commissions had been authorized in 1944 and relative rank had been conferred in 1920. Enactment in 1957 of Public Law 85-155 improved the career opportunities of nurses and medical specialists of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Currently there are approximately 3,323 Army Nurse Corps officers serving on active duty worldwide. The procurement of nurses has been improved by the establishment of programs which permit student nurses to enlist in the Women's Army Corps (WAC) during their final year of training at hospitals or during their third or fourth years of training at colleges which provide a degree in nursing. Under these programs, student nurses receive the pay and allowances of privates or privates first class, during training. Upon registration as a nurse by a State following graduation from a hospital program or 6 months prior to college graduation, these students are appointed second lieutenants, Army Nurse Corps, in the Active Army. After State registration or graduation, these nurses are ordered to the Army Medical Service School at Fort Sam Houston, Tex., for basic military training and subsequent duty at Army hospitals. The morale of the Army Nurse Corps is good. This has been personally observed on field visits and through correspondence and conferences with individual officers and chief nurses. Everything is done within imposed limitations to assign each officer to the area of her preference. Morale has in the past been adversely effected by poor housing, however, in the past several years, this has been greatly alleviated at most installations by new construction or renovation of quarters. TRAINING The Army Nurse Corps is an all-officer corps and composed of licensed profes sional nurses with the exception of a few nurses participating in one of our student programs appointed as second lieutenant 6 months prior to graduation. Additional or advanced training is accorded officers, for the most part, in clinical nursing specialties. The following clinical courses offered at differen hospitals are attended through application by the individual and selection by the Surgeon General. Officers completing these courses are assigned in the specialty areas as appropriate : Anesthesiology (2 years). Maternal and child health (22 weeks). Basic operating room nursing (22 weeks). Advanced operating room nursing (36 weeks). Cardiac surgical nursing (8 weeks). In addition, clinical short courses of a week duration, i.e., medical nursing surgical nursing, anesthesia, central materiel service, and others which ar planned according to actual and projected needs are conducted at Army Med cal Service installations. These courses serve as both refresher material an also to acquaint personnel with advances in the clinical areas. Advanced military nursing, a course of 22 weeks, is accorded career office: in the 3d to 9th year of service. Selected officers are sent to civilian universities and colleges to obtain, fo the most part, advanced graduate work in a clinical specialty. These office are then utilized in the special field giving or supervising patient care or instructors in formal courses. DUTIES The great majority of the Army Nurse Corps officers are engaged in caring for sick patients in the military hospitals. They are working in all clinical nursing areas, i.e., medical, surgical, anesthesia, operating room, outpatient clinics, etc. They function in these clinical areas as do licensed professional nurses in large and small civilian hospitals, giving both direct patient care and professional supervision and training to professional and nonprofessional staff. Patient teaching is also an integral part of their daily activities. Nurses are also utilized in full-time assignments as instructors in formal programed courses for Army Nurses Corps officers, i.e, clinical nursing courses and Army Nurse Corps orientation and advanced military nursing courses given at the Medical Field Service School, Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston, Tex. They are also utilized in enlisted programed courses, i.e., medical technician's course, Brooke Army Medical Center, advanced medical specialist courses given at four general hospitals and other hospitals in conjunction with locally planned enlisted programs of instruction in the patient care area. MEDICAL SPECIALIST CORPS Mr. FLOOD. What generally are the Medical Corps people? What is the name? General COLLINS. Medical Specialists Corps. Mr. FLOOD. What is a Medical Specialists Corps of 400 people? A corps? The Army is not in that tough a shape so that our corps are down to 400 people, are they? What is it anyhow? Who are they and what do they do? General COLLINS. I think we are referring now to the dietitians and the physiotherapists. Mr. FLOOD. Suppose you give me a couple of paragraphs on that. General COLLINS. They are physiotherapists and dietitians and that type. Mr. FLOOD. Give us a few paragraphs on what is the Army Medical Specialists Corps. Who are they and what do they do and so on. General COLLINS. All right. (The material requested follows:) ARMY MEDICAL SPECIALIST CORPS The Army Medical Specialist Corps, an officer corps, is composed of dietitians, physical therapists, and occupational therapists. It was established as the Women's Medical Specialist Corps by Public Law 36, 80th Congress, which anthorized both Regular and Reserve components. Public Law 294, 84th Congress, authorized the commissioning of qualified males in the Reserve component and changed the name to the Army Medical Specialist Corps. Dietitians, physical therapists, and occupational therapists have served with the Army at home and abroad since World War I. From 1917 to 1943, they served as civilians. In 1943, dietitians and physical therapists were given relative rank and in 1944, they received Army of the United States status. Occupational therapists continued to serve as civilians until the passage of Public Law 36 in 1947. Army dietitians are responsible for hospital food service activities including therapeutic, administrative, teaching, and research activities. They are also responsible for the feeding of hospital duty personnel. Army physical therapists work under the direction of physicians. Physical therapy is employed to aid the sick and injured to achieve maximum restoration of physical function. Treatment includes the use of specific physical agents, therapeutic exercise and rehabilitation procedures. Army occupational therapists work under the direction of physicians. Occupational therapy provides therapeutic activities for psychiatric as well as sick and injured patients. Treatment includes the use of work related procedures to increase physical and mental functional capacities. . The present authorized strength of the Army Medical Specialist Corps is 420; 170 dietitians, 170 physical therapists, and 80 occupational therapists. These officers serve in the grade of second lieutenant to colonel and are assigned to 44 hospitals and installations in the continental United States and 18 hospitals overseas. The education standards for physical and occupational therapists are estab lished and monitored by the American Medical Association; for dietitians br the American Dietetic Association. Mr. FLOOD. All you have here is an item of 400 people to get so many dollars and that does not mean anything to me. LEPROSY DUTY Here is one that startled me on page 11, halfway up the page of the justifications, where you talk about justifications of funds for pay for explosive disposal, thermal stress, diving-I can follow that one-and then leprosy duty. What in the world is this one? General COLLINS. We have one doctor down in Panama who is- General COLLINS. Yes. Mr. FLOOD. Give me a paragraph on that. General COLLINS. Yes, sir. (The information requested follows:) Hazardous duty pay for leprosy duty is authorized military personnel performing duty involving intimate contact with persons afflicted with leprosy. Current use of this pay is limited to one doctor assigned to U.S. Army element, Canal Zone Government (8730), Balboa Heights, with duty at Gorgas Hospital who spends at least 1 day each week at the Palo Seco Leprosarium. THERMAL STRESS DUTY Mr. FLOOD. Thermal stress. Why does a man get extra pay for thermal stress? Is that hot or what? Give me a couple of lines on that, too. General COLLINS. These are people in the Research and Development Laboratory. Mr. FLOOD. I would guess that. I am sure every rifle platoon has a man on thermal stress. That is safe, but give up a couple of lines on what it is and so on. General COLLINS. Yes. Mr. FLOOD. Why does he get extra pay, and so on. General COLLINS. Yes, sir. (The information requested follows:) Hazardous duty pay for thermal stress is authorized military personnel voiuntarily performing duty as human test subjects in thermal stress experiments Current use of this pay is limited to: U.S. Army Quartermaster Research Laboratory, Natick, Mass.: 30 man years annually. U.S. Army Medical Research Laboratory, Fort Knox, Ky.: 20 man-years annually. The Medical Corps is concerned with biological, psychological, and physic logical effects of extreme temperatures and means to quickly acclimate the individual to rapid changes. The Quartermaster Corps is concerned with de velopment of clothing and equipment to protect the individual from all condi tions of environmental stress. There is close coordination between these labora tories. Thermal stress experiments involve placing test subjects into climati chambers for periods up to several weeks. Subjects are exposed to extremes of high and low temperatures. Treadmills, special diets, etc., are used to induc physical and mental stress. Hazardous duty pay compensates to some degree for the risks the individual undertakes and assists in securing appropriate volunteer test subjects. Mr. FLOOD. You know, that extra pay sheet used to be twice as long as it is now. It took us a generation to get these pages torn out and now we are down to one page, which is pretty good for a hundred years. PROMOTION OF CAPTAINS On page 12, you have a hump on the promotion list. You have 15,508 majors as an average and you have 15,732 first lieutenants average, and in between you have 29,447 two-stripers. That is a hump. I thought we washed that hump out or was that on the colonels? That is a hump, Mister. General COLLINS. We do not have any hump. Mr. FLOOD. Look at the figures. What would you call it, 2 to 1, and below. Is that not a hump? Wow. General COLLINS. Captains, 29,000? Mr. FLOOD. Yes, sir. General COLLINS. You have 28,000 lieutenants. Mr. FLOOD. I am not talking about that but about promotions. The hump is 15 below and 15 on top. That is a hump. Maybe you never heard it mentioned or saw it before. In all the time we are talking about majors and lieutenant colonels, nobody talked about these two-stripers. There it is. Somebody do something about it in the record and tell me something about it. (The following was submitted later:) There is no hump in the grade of captain. The officer grade distribution shown on page 12 reflects the grades required to supoprt the fiscal year 1962 approved force structure based on an 870,000 Army with 90,000 commissioned officers. The requirements for lieutenants (first and second) are substantially the same as for captains. The organizational tables of the Army specify positions for lieutenants and do not differentiate between the grades of first and second. Second lieutenants are promoted to first lieutenants on the completion of 18 months in grade. The number of second lieutenants is computed for budget purposes only and varies each fiscal year with the planned input. During fiscal year 1962, it is estimated that of the 29,600 captains on board, approximately 3,300 will be promoted to major and approximately 2,800 will leave the service. The minimum time in grade as of June 30, 1962, for promotion from captain to major will be approximately 71⁄2 years and is considered by the Army to provide a satisfactory promotion point for this grade. General DUFF. Mr. Flood, I think the total number of lieutenants should be considered. Mr. FLOOD. I know. You do not jump from second lieutenant- Mr. FLOOD. I know that but you do not move to major from second lieutenant unless a lot of things happen. There aren't many "unlesses." Somebody figure it out. The answer is not that you promote 13.99 percent of second lieutenants. That is not the answer. You do not jump that way. Finally this: I am going to have difficulty phrasing this question. Off the record. (Discussion off the record.) PAY AND EMOLUMENTS OF MILITARY PERSONNEL Mr. FLOOD. This is what I have never seen satisfactorily in the record in one narrative with charts. This one you will have to make. Let me see if I can make myself clear. The average man in the street and the average Member of Congress-and there is no differencedoes not know and has never seen put together the emoluments beginning with base pay, with a listing of the various emoluments so that as of a certain date every grade will actually have in his pocket or to his credit in some Army account so much money. I am not speaking of just take-home pay, but I mean there is a value emolument to every grade, from five-star general down to this yard bird and the whole list of emoluments, beginning from base pay up to the last nickel, penny, I have a right to know so that I can put my finger on it and so does the public. I am not against this. I voted for all of it. I am not indicating that you are a gold-plated, white-haired servant or anything like that, but I never saw in one neat little place, a place where I could go to my chamber of commerce when I make a speech and say, "This is what a five-star general gets," over at this line. "This is what a lieutenant colonel gets." Here is Major Kelley, "Major, whether you know it or not"-and he probably does not know it either, you do not start figuring it out that young; you have to have two stars before you start to figure "Major, you are worth this much to your wife and family a month." I don't know whether you can figure some of these fringe benefits, or some of these gimmicks and bring out that this is worth so much to a two-star general on the 4th of July. Mr. MINSHALL. Will you yield? Mr. FLOOD. Yes. Mr. MINSHALL. I do not think you should single out the Army as one branch. I think in fairness to the Air Force, Navy Mr. FLOOD. I am the best friend they have. I agree with you. Mr. MAHON. Let's leave it at this. You know what Mr. Flood is asking. Do you think you will be able to approximate these costs so they will be available to us for the Army? You cannot do it for the other services. Mr. MINSHALL. We should do it for the other services, too. Mr. MAHON. We shall do that. Mr. FLOOD. We shall leave it up to the chairman and the committee that when the rest of the services come up, on such and such a date, the committee ask for this. We want exactly the same thing from every other branch of the service. I want a chart, Iwant a tablenot six of them, or not a series of them that will mess me up and I won't know what I am reading, but one decent, respectable chart. Maybe this cannot be done. Ninety percent of it you will not be able to do. A couple of bucks you will have to put in a postscript and say, "We cannot figure this out or translate them in so many dollars to add to the total in the right hand column," but 95 percent of them you can do. That is the incentive pay, hardship duty, flying pay, station allowance, terminal leave, severance pay, social security, foreign duty pay, proficiency pay, reenlistment allowances, rations, housing, clothing, death gratuities Mr. LAIRD. Don't forget the medical benefits. |