Air Force Flight Nurse

nurse2033, MSN, RN · Jul 2, 2017

I realize that this is just a blog, but polish your grammar.

The more critical care experience you have, the better. This job is currently pretty competitive, so professionalism, experience, and grammar, matter. You can google the PT requirements for Air Force. Good luck.

jfratian, DNP, RN, CRNA · Jul 3, 2017

You can't start as a flight nurse fresh from nursing school, whether you do ROTC or direct commission. They typically start you in med-surg and let you transition after your first 2 years.

Also, you should find a current Air Force flight nurse and ask them what their job entails. I can only pass along hearsay, because I have never been one. Having discussed this at length with many who have been one, I can say that many people become disappointed. It's a lot of travel with very little patient care. It is nothing like what civilian flight nursing is. It's much more focused on the plane's characteristics, flight safety, mission planning/logistics, and personnel management. To put it bluntly: you are a flight attendant with an pistol. The enlisted techs handle a lot of the hands-on patient care. These patients are almost universally walkie-talkies. AND, these days flight nursing isn't nearly as busy. There's a lot of waiting around, doing community fundraisers, and managing pointless additional duties (like the dreaded snack fund).

CCATT nurses handle all of the critically ill patients. They are much closer to the role of a civilian flight nurse. Unfortunately, most CCATT slots are part-time in the military. You do it for a deployment (6 months) and then go back to your base and work in the ICU for a while (18 months). Also, the career paths for CCATT vs. flight are almost in-congruent. Very few people have done both in a career.