US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps

Dear USNR,
Thank you, thank you, thank you, for having validating what I know to be the truth. HOW MANY others of us ARE there!!!??
There is something very strange about this whole organization. There is something very strange about the 'Program Support Center' which is ABOVE the Public Health Service on the line management chart which goes directly to the secretary of Health and Human Services. The Program Support Center is actually a quasi private management company, something like 'FANNIE MAY', would be my guess, but has anyone ever heard of it? HOW is it that a private management company is in charge of the government health programs and no one has ever even heard of them? It is all very strange and the amount of money involved is stagering. I am still afraid of these people.
My sympathies go out to you in your struggle to deal with the ordeal you had to endure. I wish you the quiet peace of knowing that within your inner self you are the same worthwhile person you have always been. This organization has no truth, so nothing they say about a person can have any validity. The karmic stench of deaing with the USPHS management is strong, but just like with chemical weapons, the sunlight, the air, the rain, and time, and the truth of your own worth as a human being will evetually neturalize the poison they strew about them.
Bleassings,
Quezen

I am REALLY interested in joining the PHS..but am having major difficulty finding a position. I graduated last year and have worked in mental health and now public health. I have applied and passed the nursing board-they gave me the green light to start looking for a position. Yet, the "recruiters" do not really recruit at all, they merely tell you where to apply and so forth. I really want this but it is just so frustrating. This process is SOOO LONG! I really dont want to give up yet I am getting irritated by the run around and such. Do any current officers have any input or suggestions? ANY INPUT would be appreciated.

I am the nurse with some of the horror stories about the Commissioned Corps that I have posted on this site.

In fairness (I am a Libra, after all), I have to add that for some people, for at least a three year period, don't take everything I have said and as a 'roadmap' for the experence you might have with the Commissioned Corps.

I keep reading the 'horror stories' in general about a lot of civilian nursing experences and I guess in their own way they are just as bad to the people who experenced them as what happen to me.

Sometimes 'systems' are rotten, I guess it has always been this way. Get rid of the 'rotten' system and since nature abhors a vacumn another system will just rise up to take it's place and with time that system may get rotten too (I guess a 'concept analyses of 'rotten' would be in order here, but I'll spare you!) It's how a person uses these systems to get through life that matters, and I guess, and in some cases the Commissioned Corps would be a good place to start a career.

The problems start with thinking that you can make a 20 year carreer, just like some of the people with an 'in' of an ethnic qualification, or a personal relationship with the 'brass' do. You get in, you get addicted to the money and the benifits, and you see others with a lot less smarts than you have effortlesly get a retirement and you want that too. Well as a Nurse, you probably won't get it!
However, that said, I believe you can get some student loans forgiven by 36 months of service with these people, you can get the GI bill, and you can qualify for a VA loan after 36 months of service, plus, I know for all you imortal youngesters this does't count, but eventually the governmnet will pick up your burial costs, just the VA system does. All for only 36 months of your life!
I realize that a lot of these things are important to young people starting out, so I think I should be fair and give both sides of the picture.
If you are smart, and can duck and dive and are flexible and willing transfere to stay ahead of the "BS" for a 36 month tour, it may be for you.
Also, YOU CAN ITER-SERVICE TRANSFERE. You may not have the nerve, right out of Nursing school to go to an Armed Forces recruter. You are pretty beat up from surviving Nursing school and your first job. However, 36 months of a decent salery, government benefits, meeting new people and dealing with 'different' systems, and you may change your mind and call that Army, Navy, or Airforce Recruiter. The important thing then would be that the 36 months Commissioned Corps service transfere as direct active service time, and you have a head start in the next service. You would not be such a 'newby'.

Now, for someone like the former Navy person, it may be that they would expect a personnel system with clear performance objectives and a well designated chain of command. This is not to be found in the Commissioned Corps, but then this is not to be found in a lot of civilian jobs, either.
Also, former soldiers, and sailors ane smart and cagey, because they have absorbed, sort of by osmosis, survival skills from the experences they dealt with in their 'former' life in the service. Who knows, maybe they can 'fly under the radar' and get that 20 years with the USPHS. Everyone has their own experience, in whatever service you could name. I don't want to dissuade someone from an experence that may be dificult, but that in the end they may profit from just because I, myself, had a bad time of it.
NO, the USPHS is NOT paying me to say some positive things about them. I still have not gotten anywhere with solving my problem with them, and I still think some of these people are names that I can't use on this site.
HOWEVER, the new Chief Nurse of the Commissioned Corps gives me the impression that she is a graceful, honest person.
If a system is ever to change, it changes with people, one 'good' person at a time. This lady, Admiral Romano, does not come from the Indian Health Service but rather the National Instutes of Health. Maybe she will be a 'new' wind blowing some good into this organization. I know that just like they say with Washington DC scene, 'its the nature of the system there, it will not change and it will eventually wear down anyone who trys to change it'. But I believe in a basic something in people and maybe, this new Chief Nurse, with some good nurses watching her back, could make a difference for the better. I hope I am not wrong in my impression of her, I have been fooled before, but something is just telling me to tell both sides of the Commissioned Corps experence.
So if think the Commissioned Corps is for you, try it, keep your head down, and keep us 'has beens' updated on what your experence was like.

I just found this site when I googled " quitting phs "
I wanted to get in touch with QUEZEN from this site.... can't figure out how to private email them.
If you see this reply, send a message to me please.
Thanks!