Air Force Nurse Corps as a New Nurse

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Hello!

I am currently a junior in nursing school, working as a tech at a nearby VA hospital. I know that I want to join the Air Force as a nurse after I graduate, and have been reading a lot about it online, but I can't seem to find any recent articles. I hear a lot about the Air Force downsizing and am wondering about the effect that has on trying to join. I've heard it is pretty competitive, and being in peace time I imagine it's even more so.

I am also wondering about the kind of patients you would see in the nurse corps. The VA I work at doesn't have nearly as sick of patients as the university hospital I do my clinicals at, and I'm assuming nursing in the military would be similar? At least during times of peace. I am hoping to work in critical care, and worry there won't be very much opportunity for that in the nurse corps.

Any information would be greatly appreciated!! I have not talked to a recruiter yet as I am only a junior have a long time before I actually graduate.

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Specializes in EMS, ED, Trauma, CEN, CPEN, TCRN.

The sooner you talk to a recruiter, the better! The application process is a lengthy one, and you want to be prepared for the next selection board. There are fewer selection boards as well due to the drawdown.

You are correct, all branches of the service are actually very competitive. The Army doesn't even take new grads via direct commission at the moment, but I believe the Navy and USAF still do. There are far more applicants that slots, generally. Keep your grades high - GPA still matters to the military!

If you browse this forum, you'll find the answers to many/most of your military-nursing-related questions. Welcome to allnurses! :)

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Specializes in Adult Critical Care.

Yeah, critical care nurses have limited available bases compared to other specialties. Most bases don't even have hospitals let alone ICUs. However, the Air Force does send ICU nurses to several integrated military medical centers that are pretty large: Walter Reed, San Antonio, Travis (CA), and Wright Patterson (OH). Those facilities are on-par with any university medical center.

I would caution that we don't allow new grads to start in critical care. You have to start in med-surg or OB. If you have an issue with that, you might consider getting a few years of civilian experience first.

One other caution: critical care nurses take a long time to train. Once you join as a critical care nurse, you will find it difficult to be released from the specialty should you decide to do flight, OR, ER, etc.

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Thanks for the info, I know it takes a long time to become a critical care nurse, but I didn't realize it would be hard to get out of. Good to know!

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i would have to disagree with the statement that those facilities are on par with any university medical center. You are not going to get the level of experience in the AF that you will in a larger medical center. No shame on the AF - its just the facts. Then again no medical center can match the experience of deploying.

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Specializes in Adult Critical Care.

There is no military hospital that is going to complete with the Cleveland Clinic, Duke, Hopkins, etc of the world. The military can't pay big name doctors big time money. We don't have any so-called quaternary care facilities. You won't be seeing full bowel transplants on a toddler in the military healthcare arena.

However, I think you'll get plenty of sick patients in one of our handful of 500-600+ bed facilities. I don't think that the average bedside nurse is going to be missing out on a lot because they aren't working at some sub-specialty unit in a 1500+ bed mega center. If anything, being that specialized limits one's overall knowledge base.

The downside to military healthcare, in my opinion, is that it is largely clinic-based. You might end-up in a small 50-75 bed hospital or outpatient clinic more often than you'd like.

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