I did my graduate nursing student rotations at the VA. I learned a TON and got way more out of it than I ever put in. The people were great - the doctors, nurses, therapists, especially patients. I met WW I and WW II veterans, Korea and Vietnam veterans. I was there two semesters and the summer quarter in between. It was just a wonderful experience all around.
My dad (who's a Korean war veteran) just enrolled with the VA about a year ago for health care. My mom's stepfather (a WW II veteran) received care through the VA for a number of years. There are some things about the VA system that work really well and deserve to be publicized so they can be duplicated. There are other things that work really badly that I wish could be overhauled. One thing that bugs me about the VA is that it's so huge and has so many responsibilities - health care, housing, insurance, even death and burial. Maybe it is too big to be effective. But Walter Reed is supposed to be top-notch and from what I am reading and seeing on TV, it is a long way from top-notch.
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