Any Former Veterans?

SunnyEricssun · Apr 15, 2017

I was in Army National Guard for 6 years as a combat medic/69w10, just graduated with AAS in nursing.

PMFB-RN, RN · Apr 17, 2017

I was in Army National Guard for 6 years as a combat medic/69w10, just graduated with AAS in nursing.

If you have at least a year of full time experience as an army medic, plus your training, you can become and RN in Wisconsin in a year. I did it in 9 months after I go out of the army and that's having never set foot in a college in my life before that.

Discharged from the army in July, started nursing school in August, Had a month off for Xmas / New Years, graduated in May. In June I started a 9 month critical care nurse residency for new grads going directly into ICU at a large academic medical center / trauma center.

Back then is cost me $2,600. Now it's up to about $4,000.

I used CLEP to get the credit I needed in things like Psychology, sociology, English, and Chemistry. I tested out of the math requirement. A friend who wasn't quite as good at passing CLEP tests did a summer semester to get those classes and still graduated in slightly less than a year.

PMFB-RN, RN · Apr 17, 2017

My post seemed harsher than I meant, and I respect anyone who served. But yeah I think Medic is one of the easier MOS's in that Corpsman always seemed to be getting out of stuff. Working partys, inspections, mess duty, formations, guard duty, all the non glamorous stuff nobody wants to do that even POGs generally have to take part in. I even remember we were doing boxing for PT one day, and the Corpsman actually brought chits from their CO saying they were exempt from taking part because the Navy didn't consider it safe, another time on mess duty one of them brought another chit saying he was exempt from finishing mess duty because the mess sgt and other Marines were picking on him, so they sent some Marine PFC to finish his time.
Having said that I did come across a few tough squared away Corpsman who didn't try to skate by, and of course a good Corpsman/Medic is worth their weight in gold when you needed one, and to be fair to them they were supposed to be the voice of medical reason and try to prevent injuries as well as treat them.

I don't know about navy corpsmen. My experience was as an army medic with an airborne light infantry unit. In my unit medics trained with and did everything the 11B's (infantrymen) did. We were used as riflemen in squad tactics, until / if someone needed medical attention. There were only a few differences. We could choose our weapon and didn't have to carry the M4 that the infantry guys did. My choice was M9 during stateside training and an M870 (Remington 870 pump 12ga shotgun with 14 inch barrel) when deployed.

I carried everything the infantry did, including extra ammo for the SAW, plus my field medic bag. While I did get out of some of the chicken S*** duty when in garrison, I was busy running sick call, or doing medic specific training during that time. I didn't get out of unit tactical training or any infantry specific training.

In an army infantry company there are only two basic skill sets. The killing people / breaking things infantry skill set, and 3 or 4 medics who are also trained in the killing people / breaking things skills, but also have another, separate skill set. This usually means that, when deployed, we get a lot of extra duty. It also means we have a lot of "soft power" with command and senior NCOs. Our "suggestions" rarely to never being ignored.