Originally Posted by all4christ1217
Hi Everyone,
I am about to start an accelerated degree program at Johns Hopkins. It is very expensive, and i have been considering joining the navy to help with school. my family is all military, and has been very supportive. But there are many better tuition repayment programs. I am just looking for peoples experiences... some past posts i have read about corpsman etc,...i have never even heard of this before. my recruiter is not very good at explaining/communicationg.
so do you like being a navy nurse... is it likely to get stuck on a sub/carrier? do you do patient care yourself? what about specialties? and whatever else you think may help me!!
thanks so much!!
I was a corpsman in the Navy and my wife was a Navy nurse. I am not sure what you have heard about corpsmen but there is no real way to explain their role in the Navy, they are subordinant personnel to nurses who have the ability to perform a wide variety of procedures as authorized by their superiors. In an inpatient setting they perform duties similar to those of a LPN or a LVN, in operational settings their responsibilities are greatly increased. If you join your experiences with corpsmen will vary greatly with each new duty station.
As for nursing, my wife says that you should be aware that the needs of the Navy come first. When you get to your first command you can request to do the type of nursing that you are interested in but ultimately you will go where they need nurses. Most commands attempt to expose non-specialized nurses to two types of nursing at each duty station. To specialize you have to work in a specific area for two years and request a subspecialty code. Even if you are specialized you can still be utilized in areas outside of your specialty. The biggest exception to this is OR nursing, these nurses will be in an OR unless they wind up stationed somewhere that does not have an OR.
Only male nurses are stationed on submarines, and there is only one nurse onboard an aircraft carrier. The nurse that was stationed on the carrier that I was stationed on said that nurses on ship's mostly request to go there so that they can make rank. As long as a nurse stays out of trouble they will make it to LCDR, the next rank (CDR) is practically always the end of a Navy nurse's staff nursing. This rank comes after at least 6-7 years of staff nursing and then you can expect to move into administration. Let us know if you have any other questions.
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Nursing Student seeking Advice about Navy Nursing
