Looking For Air Force Nursing Information

jfratian, DNP, RN, CRNA · Jan 11, 2020

The Air Force Nurse Corps is very regimented with its specialties. You can't just go from Med-Surg to flight nursing as easily as you would applying for a job in another nursing department in a civilian hospital. There are specific numbers of nurses allocated to each specialty. To transfer from one to the other you must generally wait a few years, apply, get accepted, and then attend several months of training.

If you are okay with working inpatient med-surg for 2 years and then doing flight nursing, then I would say go for it. You shouldn't have a problem getting accepted into flight after you do the minimum 2 years, because it's a very demanding (lots of travel) and high need specialty. Otherwise, get a year of experience in your specialty of choice first and then apply to the Air Force.

Fly-T-Nurse · May 7, 2020

Sounds like it really depends on your end goal and how quick you want to get there. Also, think of what type of "flight nurse" you want to be. The AF has a general "flight nurse" like jfratain spoke of with lots of travel and is a high need specialty, but note that those are the less sick patients that really need to just get back to the states for care they can't really get where they are. If you're wanting to take care of the actual critically ill patients, those are CCATT nurses who are actually ED or ICU specialty nurses that tack on the extra duty of being a CCATT nurse who work in their respective departments and then get tasked with a flight when they determine there is a critically ill patient overseas who needs to come home (or at least that's how it works from here at Travis AFB).

So if you go in as a med/surg nurse (clinical nurse) you'll have to do your time as mentioned in the above comment and then you'll either have to be accepted and do a residency to cross train to ED or ICU if you want to pursue CCATT or you'll have to be accepted for training as a "flight nurse" where your entire designated job is a flight nurse transporting the less sick folks, at which time you'll do all the flight training stuff you'll need.

There is definitely a need for flight nurses as when I went to talk to the recruiter about joining as an ED nurse a couple months ago and he found out my most recent experience was as a civilian flight nurse, he immediately began pushing me towards trying to apply as a flight nurse and telling me how they never get a nurse with actual flight experience wanting to join AD and that he felt he could have me accepted in no time. He was even trying to see if I would be willing/able to leave before October of this year so as to fill an open spot from this current fiscal year because the need is so great.

Just know that you'll really want to know your path ahead of time because the recruiters (even though they mean well) may not be able to fully fill you in on timelines and/or how difficult it may be to switch between departments once you're in. I spoke with an AD flight nurse who said he had gone in ICU and wanted to fly and it took years and years before the ICU would actually release him to be allowed to transfer to flight nursing because the need for ICU nurses at the time was as great as the need for flight nurses and they didn't want to let him go. It was on a technicality they ended up letting him go as it was. Good luck!

ExploringRN, BSN · May 8, 2020

Hi. Just looking for opportunity to join the AF. Anyone who already joined? How is it?

jfratian, DNP, RN, CRNA · May 9, 2020

Ummm, what? Are you an RN, NP, CRNA? How much experience? What kind of nurse do you want to be in the AF?

It's not possible to give you accurate info without more info about your background.

bekah2232 · May 12, 2020

Fly T Nurse So if I went med surg and was able to apply and accepted as a flight nurse and later decided I wanted to pursue CCATT flight nursing would I have to go back and work in ER or ICU first? Would that be possible because everyone tells me they are so short on flight nurses. Right now I am planning on commissioning as a med surg nurse. I am interested in eventually pursuing flight or ER nursing as both interest me. Just trying to get some information particularly in flight.

jfratian, DNP, RN, CRNA · May 13, 2020

Yep. Flight nursing in the Air Force really has nothing to do with patient care. It's way different from civilian flight nursing. The focus is on plane safety, mission planning, personnel management, etc.. It's a bit of an oversimplification, but you're essentially the head flight attendant on a C-17 or C-130. However, the "passengers" are being sent home from an overseas assignment due to a relatively minor medical issue. Often times, they self-administer their own meds. Any actually sick patient goes CCATT. Even having Dilaudid on a MAR makes a patient CCATT.

CCATT is not an AF specialty. It's a deployment UTC that ER and ICU nurses fill for 6 months every couple years. The rest of the time you work in the ER or ICU at a military base.

Fly-T-Nurse · May 13, 2020

17 hours ago, bekah2232 said:
Fly T Nurse So if I went med surg and was able to apply and accepted as a flight nurse and later decided I wanted to pursue CCATT flight nursing would I have to go back and work in ER or ICU first? Would that be possible because everyone tells me they are so short on flight nurses. Right now I am planning on commissioning as a med surg nurse. I am interested in eventually pursuing flight or ER nursing as both interest me. Just trying to get some information particularly in flight.

Yes. As jfratain said, it's not all just "flight nursing". I'm going to break it down a bit and I apologize if you already know any of this, but if you don't know it, this will help it all make a bit more sense.

In the AF you have a designated "AFSC" or basically, job title. Every department or specialty has this (even non-medical jobs). So the "Flight Nurse", ED, ICU, Med/Surg, OR, etc... all have a slightly different AFSC for their nurses (and even different for the techs/docs/etc...). What jfratain is saying is that as a "flight nurse" AFSC, you really just help facilitate transport for non-critical service members who need to get back to the states. You are there just in case and may tend to some medical needs but nothing that's actually real sick. In your down time, you do a lot of training and work a M-F job but then you have times where you're tasked to go actually do flights to bring folks home. From the folks I've talked to who work this job, the actual amount you're tasked to be gone on flights can vary quite a bit depending on where you are stationed and then you're also subject to your deployment time frame, separate from what you may fly month to month. Tends to lend to a lot of being gone at random times. And there is a formula for however many hours you are gone away from home that they give you some time off that doesn't count against your leave. Those nurses that I have talked with seem to enjoy it very much. Also keep in mind that there are only about 4 or 5 bases total that have active duty "flight nurse" or AE as they call it. Two of which are overseas, one at Travis AFB and I think one at Scott AFB (not 100% sure on that last one). I know they recently closed Pope AFB's AE program and moved those people elsewhere.

To do CCATT and care for an actual critical care patient as a nurse, you are actually assigned to an ED or ICU "AFSC"/job title and that is where you work routinely at your base. You can get called up to go do a CCATT transport if you are needed (the powers that be decide which base/team the CCATT nurses come from is what I understand). So it's like an extra duty so to speak. But on the flip side, it changes your job while you're deployed just a bit. For example: a regular ED or ICU nurse might get deployed to Afghanistan and go work in the ED or ICU (whatever they're normally assigned) just like they would back at their duty base. The nurse who is designated as CCATT would actually not work in the ED or ICU while they are deployed but would be available and flying missions as needed wherever they are deployed, but when they return home, they go back to their ED or ICU jobs.

The fact that they "need" flight nurses just means that you might have a decent shot at it if you actually initially apply to a flight nurse position or that you may have a decent shot at changing your AFSC to "flight nurse" once you've completed your first assignment on med/surg (if that's how you choose to commission). Changing AFSC's isn't always super easy, especially if you are trying to go from one "critically manned" aka "short staffed" department (as ED and ICU both tend to be) to another-even if the other is also short staffed. One of the guys I spoke with was trying to go from an ICU nurse to a regular flight nurse (not CCATT) and it took him years PLUS the AF backing out on something else they had promised him before he was able to switch. A person in my husband's ED recently had to essentially give an ultimatum that if they didn't let her go to "flight nursing", she was going to just get out of the AF. On the bright side, I don't think m/s is critically manned.

If you're looking to potentially do the more critical care transports and be a part of CCATT, I personally would recommend trying to get commissioned into the ED or ICU instead of m/s. Keep in mind that if you commission m/s, in order to change to ED or ICU, you have to complete a "residency program" of sorts that I am pretty sure you have to be accepted to and is then 1yr long. And of note, my hubby was asked if he wanted to be on the CCATT team within just a couple of months of actually being commissioned and working at his first duty station in the ED, so it wasn't like it took long before they were offering that to him once he started working.

Sorry so long but hope that helps!

mblm924 · May 25, 2020

So, I have been seriously considering joining the AF, but I tend to get mixed answers on the day-to-day.
I am currently working in a Level 1 Trauma Center. What’s it like day to day? I’m so worried they will send me to be like a L&D nurse and I don’t want to do anything BUT Emergency Medicine, like no interest in ICU either.

jfratian, DNP, RN, CRNA · May 25, 2020

If you have a year of full time RN experience in the ER, you will be working in an Air Force ER. However, it's worth noting that a military ER stateside is typically closer to an urgent care. Only in a deployed location are you doing actual trauma.

scnurse2019 · May 25, 2020

I have a year of med surg experience and thinking about joining. What is med surg nursing like in the air force. Anything I should know about joining?

jfratian, DNP, RN, CRNA · May 25, 2020

Med surg is pretty similar to the civilian side, but again lower acuity and less complex surgeries compared with a university medical center. Its 5 or 6 to one ratio depending on base. You have a lot more nurse tech support in air Force than civilian.

You should know med surg isn't a specialty. You get thrown in a general nurse pool. Most of these general nurses end up working an outpatient clinic.