Military nursing???

jeckrn, BSN, RN · May 22, 2010

You will need to explorer each service yourself to see which is the best fit for you. Each service has its pros & cons.

carolinapooh, BSN, RN · May 22, 2010

Also - each branch of the military has different bonuses, incentives, and other offerings for officer candidates right now.

Best piece of advice at this point - BE SURE YOU TALK TO A HEALTH PROFESSIONS RECRUITER from each service and NOT an enlisted recruiter. You can go to each service's website to find the HP folks. Also - please give them a break; these recruiters are very specialized and cover a very large geographical area. Don't be surprised if you're told your recruiter is several hours away and don't let it rattle you; they're used to dealing with applicants over phone, email, and UPS.

Right now - mainly due to the slumping economy - they are very, very busy and some of the offices have more applicants than they can actually handle. It may take a while for them to get back in touch with you; be as patient as you can.

And ANYTHING they tell you - be sure you ask for it in writing, regardless of what service you're talking to.

Sorry for the unsolicited advice - and I'm not trying to scare you! - I just see a lot of folks having some small problems and experiencing a lot of frustration in this area (and I understand - I've been there) and I just wanted to pass on the current climate.

Good luck - and this board is a WONDERFUL source of information!

jollyasalways · May 22, 2010

I am a BSN student, too. I graduate in January. For the past year, I've been working with a Navy recruiter. I chose the Navy because it felt right. Although, I hear that the best branch for women is the Air Force. That's followed by the Navy and then the Army. My sources are varied and have been from forums like this, current and retired officers and friends/family input. As stupid as it might sound, I chose the Navy because I like to be out on the water and I like the base locations the best. However, it seems like nowadays, no matter which service you're in, if you're a nurse working in the big hospitals, bases and the USNS Comfort and Mercy (hospital ships), you'll be in a mix from all branches.

My application for the Navy Nursing Corps (their student program) was turned down because the process took 6 months and it was late February until it was completed...too late! Oh well.

Like you, I am considering direct commission after graduation. I will admit, the mucky process, along with the surprise retirement of my recruiter (after a month of not returning my calls or emails) have all really frustrated me and put me off of the whole thing.

Here's what I know about joining the Navy as an officer RN:

- 3 or 4-yr commitment (I forget right now which one is with the bonus)

- $30,000 sign on bonus ($23k after tax-ish)

- 01 pay level w/ less than 2 years service = $2745/mo before taxes (2010 pay scale - 2011 goes up by est. $40)

- Housing stipends are varied by your post location (cost-of-living) and is enough to cover standard rent (nothing extravagant) and maybe have some left over to put toward bills. Stipends are not taxed.

- Loan repayment of up to $40k (28 after tax) is potentially available for all loans that led to your current RN degree (my recruiter mentioned that this is a "flexible" rule) and taking the repayment lengthens your contract 2 years.

- For the first 2 years of service as an RN, my recruiter said I would go to one of the big three hospitals (San Diego, Bethesda or Plymouth, VA) to gain experience. After the first 2 years they will potentially reassign me somewhere else. The recruiter and the officers that I've spoken with all agree that the Navy will do their best to send me to the spot that I choose as preference...however, it is the military and therefore, I should be prepared to be sent wherever they say. A trip into the "sandbox" should also be expected if my specialty is of need (trauma, ER, psych, etc).

A GREAT website for information on the details, benefits and such of the military is Military.com Mobile | News

. They have all the pay scales, stipends by location and other bene's listed out.

I'd love to hear someone in active duty in the forum compare the quality of day-to-day life in military nursing vs staff/civilian nursing again. I've heard good things before, but I think I still balk. It's so different than what I've known up until now.

I want to know:

-- that work life is not rigid and cold.

-- that the responsibility of patient care along with the leadership roles we are assigned to grow with are not overwhelming.

-- that the patient to nurse ratio's are decent.

-- that they don't work you overtime much.

-- that the housing stipends are more than adequate to cover rent and utilities (single girl living alone and simply).

-- that the promotions are frequent and I can make more than $4k/mo quickly (I've seen the payscale grades and I know what I'll come in at, but I need more to pay on my student loans).

Hope this helps! :)

carolinapooh, BSN, RN · May 22, 2010

Good post - it's Portsmouth, though, and it's a fantastic facility now. (Former Navy brat here.) It's a few miles away from HQ Atlantic Fleet in Norfolk - actually, it's just across the river from it. Pretty nice area in a lot of ways; there's a lot to do and a lot of growth there thanks primarily to the Navy.

(Norfolk is where my parents met back in 1953, the night of the Marine Corps Ball!)

Your reasons for picking the Navy are sound. A trip to the sandbox isn't always specialty-dependent, although certain specialties in any of the services go there more than others. You're right - every so often special duty TDYs come up for other services on board the hospital ships (I'd love to be on the Comfort or the Mercy).

My dad was a Navy Corpsman so I've spent a lot of time around the medical field my whole life. Funny it took me so long to go into nursing given my life experiences.

Anyway, I worked for two years in the civilian world (I also went to school at Duke and did ninety percent of my clinicals at Duke Hospital, so I actually feel like I worked there four years!) and I'll tell you, the military in many ways is spoiled rotten.

The communication between MD and RN is better to me on the inside than on the outside.

Yes, sometimes MDs pull rank, and yes, sometimes they lose their temper and sometimes they act like idiots - but I'd be surprised to hear about an MD throwing things in a military OR like I've heard about on the outside, because here there are consequences for those types of actions. Rank plays a big part in it - there's always the chance your manager will outrank the doc in question, and they need to remember that.

Our patient ratios are amazing. I work in the DOD's only Bone Marrow Transplant Center here at Wilford Hall Medical Center, and we get transplant and cancer patients from all over the world (one of our Active Duty hematology patients was flown here from Japan for treatment). My typical patient load is two patients. On the onc floor at Duke, I'd often have as many as seven.

The medical side of the military is very different from what the Air Force calls the "line side" (everyone else). And I know about the AF and the Navy side of this. In a lot of ways working at Wilford Hall is exactly like working at Duke, and in a lot of ways it's different because of the military element. I can only speak for my floor, but I actually prefer the atmosphere there to the one at Duke - and I LOVED my floor at Duke. There's more structure and more consequence in the balance, and it makes a difference. Also, you'll have medical techs (you'd have corpsmen) to help you - essentially most days at work I have a med tech assigned to me and to my patients, and they are a fantastic group to work with. In many cases they know more about some things than I do (I do cancer, not cardiology, and yesterday one of my techs explained some of the finer points of a 12 lead EKG to me). You learn from each other and it's encouraged. It's helpful to know that if you're tied up with one patient, there's someone monitoring the others.

Again, I'm only speaking for my floor, but this seems to be a pretty common situation, and I remember this also from when I was a kid.

Promotions are according to how long you've been at a particular pay grade/rank (this is where you'll here people talk about "time in grade") and getting from O3 to O4 can take a while (especially in the AF; the Navy I believe promotes a bit faster to Lt Commander if only because they're a bigger service). But your pay will never go down - something you won't necessarily see on the civilian side. And when you're transferred, you don't lose seniority - while you'll definitely have to orient to your new position, you don't take a pay cut to do it, and you're still whatever rank you were when you moved, so you still have the same level of responsibility and authority if not the expertise.

I prefer it here, I'm happier here, and it's not perfect (nowhere is), but I think life on the inside is better in a lot of ways. Sucks in a lot of ways, but the benefits for me outweigh all the negatives.

Keep pursuing your dream of a commission in the Navy if that's what you want. (BTW, the Navy was my second choice - nothing wrong with a Navy career, as my late father - a retired Chief, and my brother, a retired E9, would tell you!)

jollyasalways · May 22, 2010

CarolinaPooh:

That was a terrific post! Thank you for all the insight and information. Also, thanks for correcting my Portsmouth goof. For some reason I always get that name mixed up.

It's amazing how similar your experiences have been to the other military nurses I've talked to over time. I've yet to find any nurse who is unhappy with his or her choice to go military. That amazes me (and sometimes scares me) because it does seem like a really good deal...rewarding...exciting...benefits...options...etc. What's the catch? :coollook:

Every time I break it down to facts and figures, it seems like a "no duh" decision. I think there's a pay cut overall and there's a distinct lack of overtime pay or shift differentials, but that balances out with the stipends and the fact that health care/insurance is not taken out of your checks! I'm lucky to have 3 reserve and active-duty (on break to get BSN) students in my class. They are all very positive about their experiences thus far, too.

There are so many benefits to dedicating yourself to Uncle Sam...

Free health care

Retirement in 20 years (I'm 32, so that's still super awesome)

World travel (I hope!)

Hospital ship assignment (I hope!)

Better working environment (I've heard that from SO many, just like you CarolinaPooh)

Camaraderie

Discounts

Stipends

Vacation Time (40 days/year?)

You take those pro's with these con's...

Unpaid overtime

Yuck duty assignments

A loss of some freedoms being a part of the govt

Itchy uniforms )

(I can't think of any others)

I'm a chiropractor and an acupuncturist, as well. I left private practice because marketing and practice building made me unhappy. Sometimes I felt pressure to sell out just to keep the doors open. I just wanted to do the patient care part of my job. That's what I love! The stress level of owning my own practice fresh out of school and not having a mentor to turn to sent me into my own private hell. I ended up in the hospital with stress induced atrial fib (I'm a healthy girl and the ticker is strong -- but it was warning me). So, I sold the practice and got the heck out. I got myself into an accelerated BSN course within a year. I chose nursing because the nurses that took care of me in the hospital were amazing...and I have many nurses in my family who are shining examples. I hope I can be that same person for my own patients in the years to come.

I also hope I can still practice one or two days a week as a chiropractor when I'm an RN in the military. Does anyone know? Obviously it depends on where I'm stationed and what civilian clinics are close by. It's a part of who I am and I want to maintain that. Plus, there are chiro's on many military bases nowadays and someday I'll be right there (how convenient) to jump in and help. )

I'm babbling. I'll stop. Thanks, again, for the input, CarolinaPooh. Everyone have a great weekend! :)

Vikingkitten · May 25, 2010

Going along with what Carolina and others have said. The first thing you need to do is get to the Health Care Recruiters of All the Services. Make up your mind what you want(schooling, base assignment, rank , GI bill.........) and get it all in writing, to your satisfaction. There's plenty of info out on any Service you want to join. I hate to say this, as I 'm sure you do enough of it now, but do your homework before you talk to the Recruiter and your experience will be a better one.

Just my $.02.

MSG Ski (Ret)