Military Options for Nursing Students

[Fisch161]

Hello All,

First off, thank you for any help with this topic. My name is Hunter and I am currently in nursing school with approximately 1.5 years left. I am 30 years old and currently work as an EMT in southern California. My older brother joined the military a year ago and I have been considering joining. I looked into some options but seem to get a lot of ambiguous information. I have tried to talk to recruiters at carreer fairs at my school and all they tell me is to wait till I graduate and have 6 months experience to apply. I know I do not qualify for ROTC, due to my age and the amount of school I have left. Are there any options out there to join while I am in school? If so what are the Pros and Cons?

Again thank you for any help!!!

-Hunter

[jfratian, DNP, RN, CRNA]

It depends on whether or not the 3 branches are taking new grad nurses or not. Sometimes, the ROTC pipeline fills up all of the new grad slots. In that case, they only take new nurses. Other times, they need to take new grads; in that case, you start applying about a year out from graduation.

That situation changes from year to year. Only a recruiter would know for sure. I would recommend you compare all 3 branches to open up more options.

[androo001]

Just a suggestion. Consider the Air or Army National Guard (serve your state) or reserve (serve local and deploy). That way, get your foot in the door, then apply for active guard/reserve. Wear uniform during drilling times and nurse attire at work if you can get a Military Treatment Facility (MTF). Good luck.

[Jeckrn1, ADN, BSN]

If you want to go active duty it is not always easy to switch from reserves to active. You will have to go through the whole boarding process again. There are times they will be taking non ROTC nurses but not reserve nurses. This like anything else changes based on the mission.

[Fly-T-Nurse]

It's my understanding that here are no options to join as a nurse while you're in school. If you try to join, even the reserve/guard, they'll try to recruit you as an enlisted medical "tech" of sorts (happened to me when I looked into it as a ADN nurse because I didn't have my BSN yet). Important to note: will you be graduating with an ADN or BSN? You must have your BSN to commission as a RN with any branch (I had a ton of people try to tell me they'd take you with an ADN and it turned out to not be true, even for the reserve/guard units. They truly told me I could enlist as a nurse but ultimately I would have a tech job, not an actual officer RN position).

You MIGHT get lucky as a brand new nurse with less than a year experience and get into a nurse transition program. For that, I'd start calling the health professions recruiters when you are 6mo-1yr from graduating.

If you're graduating with an ADN, graduate and start working and start a BSN program and then when you are 1yr from graduating with your BSN, start taking to health professions recruiter. You have to have at least 1 yr experience in your specialty to qualify to be hired as a qualified nurse and avoid a new nurse transition program. If you have less than a year, you have to compete for a spot in a nurse transition program and they're competitive and you have to have at least a 3.5 GPA (at least this is for the AF).

Just make sure you're speaking with a health professions recruiter with each branch you talk to because they are different than the general recruiters. Good luck!