Air Force (Military) Labor and Delivery... Good, bad, and the ugly?

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Hey everyone,

I am currently half way through my 3rd of 4 semesters of BSN school. I am active duty Air Force attending on a scholarship program. I am very interested in working in Labor and Delivery (OB) upon graduation of school and COT. I was just hoping to get some of the good, bad, and ugly from those of you who may be working in that area or those who have in the past. Thank you in advance for any comments you might have.

HSN

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Specializes in ED. ICU, PICU, infection prevention, aeromedical e.

I'm AF, ICU specialty. I would say to be careful of to specific a choice. I feel somewhat pigeon holed in ICU. My choices for bases/assignments are very limited due to there needing to be a hospital with an ICU, which with the closure of so many bases limits me. I bet the same can be said for OB.

When you deploy, you will not be acting as an OB nurse, you will be more of the general med/surg variety.

being med/surg does not mean you get stuck on some boring floor in the military. They can still put you anywhere. The world is more open to the nurses I know who went the med/surg route. They get deployed to cool locations whereas in ICU, I can bet I'll be visiting Afghanistan for most of my deployments.

Hope that is of some use.

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Specializes in OB, Med/Surg, PCU.

Hello,

I am an OB nurse and have been so for the past 5 years. Fact I love love love it! I am actually joining the air force reserves in the next year or so and I too have some advice for you as far as assignments. I would recommend that you do med/surg first and get the experience and then if you would like specialize in OB/Labor because although I have been doing mostly OB for my career, I also work in PCU and Med/Surg as well part-time and have been doing so for the last 2 years. Therefore I make myself more marketable not only having a specialty under my belt but medical surgical skills as well. Also as a new grad it is sometimes hard to find OB jobs that will hire if u have no prior experience in the field whereas Med/Surg is the opposite. I got into OB because I was already working at the hospital when I graduated with my BSN and I got the opportunity to transfer from the Medical Telemetry Floor. So if you can find a OB job when u graduate don't stress it, take the med/surg and embrace the experience...it may make ur military experience better.

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