US Navy Nurse Corps as already a licensed practicing nurse

jfratian, DNP, RN, CRNA · Jun 19, 2018

Schools change their curriculum all the time and I'm at a loss to find 30 credit hour MSNs. I found that the University of Alaska Anchorage has a 32 credit MSN (which includes 3 hours for a capstone project...so really that's 29 credits of actual classwork) for leadership or education for those with a BSN already.

Unfortunately, I'm not a recruiter and am not up on the current policies. I would definitely propose the idea of getting an MSN to an actual healthcare recruiter before doing it. They allow advanced practice nurses to apply using the GPA of their graduate programs. They also allow foreign BSN students to qualify by earning an MSN in the U.S. So, I am extrapolating a little bit and haven't heard of your specific situation before. I do not know if they average graduate GPAs with undergrad or not.

guest545900 · Jun 21, 2018

Thank you so much for the informative feedback I received it really helped put things in perspective, I actually recently spoke to both a navy and an air force recruiter in regards to joining I spoke to recruiters who are both officers and specifically deal with healthcare and nursing. I was told by both that gpa will not be a problem because I'm already working as a nurse gpa however will be an issue if I were to still be in college going to nursing school because then that would be competitive to get accepted because then the military would pay to finish your school and then have you train so it's more competitive that route but since I'm not in that position that my chances are really high because nursing is in really high demand right now. I'm hoping they're right, now I'm conflicted as to which branch I should go about. I have been told the Navy has much more hospitals and nurse related fields than the Air Force, so I'm not sure which route to take. For those more savvy what Do you recommend is a better route for a nurse, the navy or the Air Force?

jfratian, DNP, RN, CRNA · Jun 21, 2018

I wouldn't put too much stock in the acuity of patients in each military branch. Honestly, patient acuity in any military hospital is low. Acuity isn't the reason to join the military, because you only really see it on deployments. That's why most military training programs send you to civilian hospitals (I'm in one right now).

Yeah, I would question that Navy recruiter about what the word 'hospital' entails. Really, the Navy has only 3 facilities that any civilian nurse would consider a true hospital: San Diego (277 beds), Walter Reed (288 beds), and Portsmouth (259 inpatient beds). When you consider that New York Presbyterian hospital has nearly 2500 beds and most major university teaching hospitals have 1000+ beds, Navy medicine really isn't really that big. The AF and Army aren't much better in that regard.

The Army honestly has the most inpatient (or really any really any type of structure) infrastructure of the 3 branches. They also control the largest (albeit in a joint agreement with the Air Force) military hospital: San Antonio Military Medical Center (425 beds); the military's only level 1 trauma center.

You should instead pick based on what sort of nursing you want to do. For the most part, military nurses do similar jobs regardless of the branch they are in. It's the one-off special jobs that are branch-specific. Flight nursing is almost exclusively done by the Air Force for all 3 branches. Ship nursing is all Navy.

Broadly speaking from my experience, the Air Force Nurse Corps values specialization. The Navy Nurse Corps values jacks-of-all-trades. In the AF, a med-surg nurse who wanted to do ICU or ER would need to have 2 years of experience, and then go to a 1 year school at another base to learn how to be an ICU/ER nurse; that course includes graded tests, research papers, and over 1000 clinical hours at a civilian level 1 trauma center. The AF is good for people who know what they want to do and want to focus on that one thing. In the Navy, that med-surg nurse would largely receive on-the-job training at their local hospital. The Navy has specialty codes for ICU, ER, etc, but you generally earn them OTJ. The Navy is good if you want to do a little bit of everything.

guest545900 · Jun 22, 2018

You should instead pick based on what sort of nursing you want to do. For the most part, military nurses do similar jobs regardless of the branch they are in. It's the one-off special jobs that are branch-specific. Flight nursing is almost exclusively done by the Air Force for all 3 branches. Ship nursing is all Navy.
Broadly speaking from my experience, the Air Force Nurse Corps values specialization. The Navy Nurse Corps values jacks-of-all-trades. In the AF, a med-surg nurse who wanted to do ICU or ER would need to have 2 years of experience, and then go to a 1 year school at another base to learn how to be an ICU/ER nurse; that course includes graded tests, research papers, and over 1000 clinical hours at a civilian level 1 trauma center. The AF is good for people who know what they want to do and want to focus on that one thing. In the Navy, that med-surg nurse would largely receive on-the-job training at their local hospital. The Navy has specialty codes for ICU, ER, etc, but you generally earn them OTJ. The Navy is good if you want to do a little bit of everything.

Very informative thank you!! So as far as gaining experience in different areas of nursing, the navy is a good choice? Seems like although the air force is a great choice too, there's more hoops to jump through in order to try different areas of nursing, seems like its harder to jump around specialties. I have my appointment with the navy officer coming up soon, lets see what he tells me in regards to this. Good thing is that he's a healthcare recruiter hopefully he can give me a better perspective. At the end of the day i'm grateful for the opportunity to even practice as a registered nurse within the military, but career wise just thinking about growth as well.

I must say now that things are actually moving more, im getting a little nervous of the unknown any advice?

guest545900 · Jun 23, 2018

I hope this helps anyone in the future regarding the GPA as i was confused before, depending on how many colleges you went to, graduated from even if you didn't graduate but still took classes like i did( i went to a 2 year college, then transferred to a university for my undergrad degree) they use ALL of your GPA's together to actually calculate the total by averaging it out. Turns out my GPA averaged out was more than 3.0 because i went to 2 prior universities for a different degree and nearly graduated before i switched to nursing and happened to have a 4.0 average in that one and a 3.8 in the other so it helped me tremendously as well as my initial associates degree. Don't feel discouraged about the gpa, even the officer personally said to me: "whats the difference between a nurse with a 4.0 and a nurse with a 2.0 = still a nurse!" So if you want this keep pushing through.

I've decided to purse the Navy route, i started the paperwork yesterday and hoping for the best, must admit im a bit nervous.