Upon completing his residency at Jefferson in 2009, Daniel Grabo, MD, began a one year commitment on the USS Enterprise and the USS G.H.W. Bush as Navy Lieutenant Commander and ship surgeon. It was his job to ready both ships for sea, medically speaking. This included six weeks at a time doing “sea trial” workups between Virginia and the Bahamas.

Both ships carried 5,000 sailors and had a standard-size operating room. Dr. Grabo prepared the GHW Bush OR for sea and performed basic emergency surgery with the assistance of two surgical technicians. He also learned all he could about radar, propulsion, intelligence, weapon and aviation systems, which earned him a Surface Warfare Pin.

After completing his current fellowship program in trauma and critical care at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Grabo will likely return to a Naval hospital and then be deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq. “That’s what I want to do,” he says, “to give five years of my training back to the Navy. They’ve been very good to me.”