Rutgers Nursing Magazine - Summer 2020

A C A D E M I C E X C E L L E N C E A Life of Service As an Air Force Reservist and Nurse Anesthetist, Alumnus Jedd Dillman Has Devoted Himself to Serving Others. “You can trust me with your life.” Jedd Dillman (DNP, CRNA, APRN), a May 2020 graduate of Rutgers’ nurse anesthesia program, is describing the bond he feels with the patients he serves. If he doesn’t use those exact words with them prior to surgery, he always tries to communicate the message. For Dillman, the words, and the message, are a carryover from his continuing work with the U.S. Air Force Reserves. As a flight nurse with the Air Force’s Aeromedical Evacuation System, Dillman has worked for the past five years as part of a five-person team whose mission is to help move wounded warriors from the battlefield to their home bases in the U.S. The team works stateside and overseas, providing time-sensitive, mission-critical en route care to patients from Air Force bases like Andrews in Bethesda, Md., to a destination facility. “If you’re injured on the battlefield and we can get you to a forward-operating base where there’s some sort of medical treatment,” Dillman says, “you have a 95 percent chance of surviving.” It’s an awesome responsibility and the essence of a core Air Force value known as “service before self.” That value impelled Dillman to apply to Rutgers’ nurse anesthesia program in 2017. He was looking for a profession that would not only allow him to serve patients but would also afford him greater autonomy and responsibility. It’s been a challenging three years, and in that time, working as a nurse anesthetist, he says, “has become my passion—it’s incredible what I get to do.” One of the most rewarding aspects of the program is the friendships he’s built with his classmates. “We’re all nurses at heart and by background,” he notes, “so taking care of people at their most vulnerable is something that comes naturally to us.” n