A lot of weird details about this alleged American jihadi nurse story.

Starting with the title:

The American nurse, 19, arrested at Denver airport as she prepared ‘to join and fight with ISIS militant who seduced her on Skype and wanted to make her his wife in Syria’

A 19-year-old Denver woman has been arrested on terrorism charges for allegedly plotting to travel to Syria and join an Islamist extremist she had met online and was planning to marry.

Since when did we start cranking out nurses at 19?

Read more of the story – see here, here, and here – and you start to get a whiff of perhaps this woman is not exactly what you’d call neurotypical.  She seems to have gotten a pretty bad fixation on the Faith Bible Chapel of Alveda, Colorado*, and somehow translated that into wanting to become a jihadi fighter for ISIS. Apparently she was pretty open about it, too: she was in regular contact with local FBI agents about going to Syria to fight, which is not exactly normal behavior for a budding jihadi.  I should probably note at this point that the arrest was actually in April; the records are just being unsealed now.

It’s entirely possible that the woman was in contact with ISIS, of course: but, honestly, this one reads like Loony woman is loony and should maybe be on medication. It doesn’t fit the usual profile for terrorist recruitment, in other words.  Too much… melodrama.

Moe Lane

*Site of a 2007 domestic terrorist attack (two dead at that site) by an anti-Christian fanatic. So, as one might imagine, they get a little sensitive when people wander around, take notes, and then get belligerent when someone politely asks them why they’re doing that.

9 thoughts on “A lot of weird details about this alleged American jihadi nurse story.”

  1. One could theoretically be an LVN (lowest level of nursing) at 19, provided was heavily involved in a nurse vocational program (such as HOSA) during high school.

    Whether this individual did all that or was still taking pre-reqs to enter into a nursing program and the Daily Mail did not make the distinction betwixt nurse and nursing student, I cannot say.

    1. It’s .. actually even worse than that.
      .
      My nurse friends (one of whom holds a doctorate in nursing and teaches at .. let’s say a northeastern state college with a pretty solid basketball team) say there are three ways a person can get the title “nurse”.
      .
      1) College degree in nursing. This is the “hospital-preferred” method, the person takes a full course load over several years and comes out a nurse who can start in most departments of a hospital on their first day, and who are quite capable of learning more on the job.
      .
      2) Trade school certificate in nursing. This is the “rest home preferred” method, as it produces “nurses” within a short (1-2 year) period who are quite competent to care for the elderly and/or infirm, but who you don’t want in the ICU or ER.
      .
      3) Apprenticeship programs. This is .. pretty much an outdated, outmoded approach that some hospitals still persist in offering, or so I am told. Works about like it sounds, a non-medically-trained person with an interest is attached to a trained nurse who has some skill at explaining new things and .. after said non-trained person has enough experience, poof – nurse.
      .
      I postulate that the person in the story either started or possibly completed a trade-school-nursing program.
      .
      Mew

      1. I’ve got to quibble a bit about apprenticeship programs.
        I have it on good account that they produce excellent nurses, better than most college programs produce, but doing so costs the hospital a large amount of money and resources. They aren’t about following a nurse around until you learn the job, they’re rigorous education/training programs.
        Most hospitals would much rather just hire nurses trained at no cost to them. Those hospitals that still choose to have an apprenticeship program have an investment in the personnel they’ve trained, and understand that loyalty is a two-way street. Apprenticeship nurses don’t hit the open labor market very often. When they do, they don’t tend to stay there long.

    2. Colorado has on-line licensure lookup. Shannon Conley is a Certified Nurse Aide (CNA), which isn’t actually a nurse – it qualifies you to work in a nursing home or other care facility and to do things like take vitals, perform personal care, and so on. The training is about 6 months and there’s a certification exam.
      .
      In Colorado, you can be a Medical Assistant (optional certification is available nationally, but Colorado doesn’t certify them), a CNA, a Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN – the lowest level of licensure), or a Registered Nurse (RN). The distinction between RN, which requires an Associate’s Degree, a BSN (someone with a bachelor’s degree in nursing), and someone with a doctorate in nursing (no, that’s not a contradiction) is entirely in the attraction to employers. There’s no licensure or scope of practice difference. The next step “up” is to Nurse Practitioner, who can practice independently, albeit under the (often nominal) supervision of a licensed physician.
      .
      Yes, this is my world.

  2. And she also claimed that she was going to use her military training, acquired at a grueling course in an Army run version of the Explorer Scouts.
    .
    Yeah, hopefully this woman gets the mental care she needs and comes to the realization that she got saved from going over to that place.

    1. I believe she claimed that she would be useful as a nurse because of some first aid training received from said para-military scout group.
      I expect her jihadi experience would have been a series of quick marriages followed by quick boinks followed by quick divorces.
      Allah Akbar, y’all!

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