Navy Intensive Care Nursing / STPs

[kmMT]

Hello,

I just signed up for allnurses, but have been an active reader for a while now.

Currently I am a junior in college, and will be applying for acceptance into the final BSN program this summer. Also this summer, I am going to be submitting an application for the Navy Nurse Candidate Program and I couldn't be more excited about both!

My main question here is how much experience do nurses working in Shock Trauma Platoons have under their belt? Intensive care is the direction I would like to head, and would appreciate the opportunity to be deployed. However, personally I would like to be out in the field with an STP rather than in a foreign hospital.

I do not plan on only completing my required three years; I would like to have a career as a Navy Nurse, and hopefully finish a graduate program through the Navy. Time is not an issue for me, I just would like to get an idea of a timeline (I like to plan ahead!).

Any comments, opinions, and suggestions regarding the NCP, being a Navy Nurse, and/or what it's like to work in STPs would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time!

[jfratian, DNP, RN, CRNA]

First, it sounds like you have a bright future ahead. However, I want to clear a few misconceptions about military nursing that you may have.

I don't know the Navy, however I know in the Air Force we have CCATT's (critical care air transport teams) that sound similar to what you're talking about. However, you don't get to do that until many years after graduation.

Your likely timeline as a new grad would be 2 years on a med-surg floor, 1 year in a critical care fellowship, 2 years of ICU/ED nursing, and 3-6 months of additional specialty training before you ever even became a member of one of those teams. So, 5.5 years after graduation...

Also, contrary to what most people think, military nursing is generally an acuity downgrade from the civilian world. When you aren't deployed, your patients that aren't even as sick as the average civilian community hospital. Right now, few people even deploy. That can change of course.

A new grad in the civilian sector could start in ICU right away. At your typical tertiary care hospital (700+ beds), you'd see way sicker patients than most military facilities. After ~2 years, one could do flight nursing for a private aerovac company and see a lot of the same cool stuff. If adrenaline is what your seeking, the civilian sector actually does better, quicker.