Difference in military nursing vs commission corps of USPHS

[Juninho22]

Hi everyone.

I have been doing some research on being a nurse in the military and recently came across someone talking about looking into the commission corps of USPHS. I was wondering if anyone had any experience with USPHS. Or if anyone was in the military and then joined the USPHS or vise versa.

Differences in both and which would you do from the beginning if had the chance to start over.

Thanks

[jfratian, DNP, RN, CRNA]

I'm Air Force and have never been USPHS. However, from talking to a few of them, the role is pretty sweet. You get many of the perks of active duty military status without many of the same obligations. You get a Navy officer's rank and the requisite pay of that rank. You enjoy the same pension after 20-30 years of service that a military officer would get. You can be sent on humanitarian missions, but you don't really deploy into a combat zone. From what I understand, you really don't move either. It's probably the hardest "branch" to get into, and someone has to die or retire for a spot to open up.

If you like the military macho stuff, USPHS probably isn't for you. Your 'rank' really doesn't mean quite as much either. I've seen their people intermixed in civilian hospitals, and they generally don't have any of the supervisory authority that a true military nurse would have. An O-3 nurse in the Air Force could easily lead a clinic of several dozen people. An O-3 nurse in the USPHS could easily supervise nobody.