I'm sure this question has been asked more than once, so please bear with me. I've been sifting through all the information I can find, but I still don't quite understand...
I've just started toying with the idea of Navy Nursing. I graduate from a BSN program in December. But have very little knowledge about the military in general, less about the Navy specifically, and even less about Navy Nursing.
Specifically, I'm wondering about the following:
1.What are the requirements for being accepted?
2.What is the minimum length for which you can sign up?
3.After being accepted, what happens as far as training? (What kind, where do you go, how long etc)
4.After training, then what? What kind of setting do you start off in, how long will you be there, and do you get any real choice at this point in where you'll be?
5.What about deployments? How often and how long? Do deployments differ for nurses and if they do, how so?
6.What other things do I need to know but I don't know enough to know that I need to know them?
Thank you so much for any insight. I'm planning on speaking with a recruiter soon, but I want to be a little more informed first. You know... wouldn't want to have “sucker” written on my forehead.
O.K. First of all, going to Med/ Surg is not old guard thinking, that's new guard. The thought process being that if you have general nursing knowledge, a.k.a Med/ surg experience, you'll be more useful in the field. Those words came straight from ADM Busekholer (sp) herself in Feb '06, cause I asked her myself. She expects EVERY nurse to be a generalist first then get your subspecialty code as the opportunity arises. If you look at all your codes 1900 (nurse generalist) is the first one. You're right, I did come in at a different time and I lucked out out with being specialty the whole time. That's doesn't mean that I have NEVER worked on a med-surg floor. Stationed in Sigonella where there were only 3 nurses to work the floors in the whole hospital including the ED, believe me I did my share. Anyone coming in to the Navy now is going to be expected to work the Med-surg floor, it's a current way of life. Your depiction of life on a med-surg floor is misleading, yes life is tough, Navy life is tough, nursing life is tough. However, coming on here and complaining about it does nothing, but make Navy nursing appear to be a bad deal. Your experience is just that yours, I don't thinking you want to work smarter, not harder. I think you are indeed jealous and your efforts would be better suited to trying to solve your current problem vs. finding a way around it. Dodging the problem does nothing for you or Navy nursing, facing and solving things like this is what will set you apart from other Navy nurses, any Nurse can dodge the problem. Think about it......
LCDR(s) Dan
Sir,
This could go on forever. Again, I agree with you 100% I say send all accessions to one of the big 3 hospitals and make them all work the med/surg floor. Once you've worked the floor for a year then you can go to peds/mother-baby/psych/ED/OR/ICU or whatever your fancy. Your right...I've been on the busiest med/surg floor in the Navy for 18mos and I can work circles around just about every nurse regardless of how long they've been a nurse. When I float to another floor "hey, just tell me what patients I have...and the combo to the med room" and I'm set. Here's the unfortunate reality check...
Ens pm (I don't know this person) he/she probaby a great peds nurse...does everything he/she is asked...great all around sailor. (I'm just using her/him b/c she/he has a lot of posts on this site) (not trying to single you out p.m. so don't get mad. just using you as an example for danzrn)
PM is a (7p-7a) peds nurse. This is just a blind guess...But I'm willing to bet this nurse has what I would call an extremely easy patient load. So here's a pm peds nurse with probably not a lot of nursing skill (nothing personal p.m.) who has been sent out to the fleet and has been told she/he will be able to crosstrain to a specialty area after she/he has worked the peds floor for a year. OK...Now here we have all the nurses that work up on the upper 4th & 5th deck. A lot of great nurses with a lot of skills who are taking care of really sick people day and night. (barely enough time to pee and go to lunch) I haven't seen any of these nurses have any priority when it comes to going on deployments/or crosstraining. So here we are...doing the real dirty work with no incentive...want to go from peds/mother-baby/psych to the ICU/ED/OR...(no problem) even though the folks on 4 and 5 take care of these patients everyday. Want to go on a 3 month cruise(with only peds pm experience)...no problem.
You and pm seem to really love navy nursing, and that's great...(I wasn't there so I don't know for sure) but when asked by the hospital detailer where you wanted to work I doubt they said "we are overstaffed in the med/surg dept. Could you pick some other dept to work." It probably went something like this "I'm really excited about being a Navy nurse. I have such and such experience. I would really like to work in (blank) dept." I don't understand how being a peds night nurse makes for a more qualified ED/ICU/OR nurse...but it really doesn't matter...
If the navy was serious about having more experienced general nurses they would send everyone upstairs for a while. You wouldn't have the opportunity to be a pm peds nurse(1st year out of school) and go on a float(pm I'm really not trying to pick on you). Who's dodging what? I'm sure you and pm had the opportunity to go med/surg...and you didn't...that's ok. Doesn't sound like it held either of you back. In fact, you're both doing better than me. Why would the viewers of this post not want to follow yours and pm track?
GO TO A SMALL COMMAND...OR YOU REALLY WANT TO WORK WITH PREGNANT WOMEN/CHILDREN/PSYCH....
This could go on forever. Again, I agree with you 100% I say send all accessions to one of the big 3 hospitals and make them all work the med/surg floor. Once you've worked the floor for a year then you can go to peds/mother-baby/psych/ED/OR/ICU or whatever your fancy. Your right...I've been on the busiest med/surg floor in the Navy for 18mos and I can work circles around just about every nurse regardless of how long they've been a nurse. When I float to another floor "hey, just tell me what patients I have...and the combo to the med room" and I'm set. Here's the unfortunate reality check...
Ens pm (I don't know this person) he/she probaby a great peds nurse...does everything he/she is asked...great all around sailor. (I'm just using her/him b/c she/he has a lot of posts on this site) (not trying to single you out p.m. so don't get mad. just using you as an example for danzrn)
PM is a (7p-7a) peds nurse. This is just a blind guess...But I'm willing to bet this nurse has what I would call an extremely easy patient load. So here's a pm peds nurse with probably not a lot of nursing skill (nothing personal p.m.) who has been sent out to the fleet and has been told she/he will be able to crosstrain to a specialty area after she/he has worked the peds floor for a year. OK...Now here we have all the nurses that work up on the upper 4th & 5th deck. A lot of great nurses with a lot of skills who are taking care of really sick people day and night. (barely enough time to pee and go to lunch) I haven't seen any of these nurses have any priority when it comes to going on deployments/or crosstraining. So here we are...doing the real dirty work with no incentive...want to go from peds/mother-baby/psych to the ICU/ED/OR...(no problem) even though the folks on 4 and 5 take care of these patients everyday. Want to go on a 3 month cruise(with only peds pm experience)...no problem.
You and pm seem to really love navy nursing, and that's great...(I wasn't there so I don't know for sure) but when asked by the hospital detailer where you wanted to work I doubt they said "we are overstaffed in the med/surg dept. Could you pick some other dept to work." It probably went something like this "I'm really excited about being a Navy nurse. I have such and such experience. I would really like to work in (blank) dept." I don't understand how being a peds night nurse makes for a more qualified ED/ICU/OR nurse...but it really doesn't matter...
If the navy was serious about having more experienced general nurses they would send everyone upstairs for a while. You wouldn't have the opportunity to be a pm peds nurse(1st year out of school) and go on a float(pm I'm really not trying to pick on you). Who's dodging what? I'm sure you and pm had the opportunity to go med/surg...and you didn't...that's ok. Doesn't sound like it held either of you back. In fact, you're both doing better than me. Why would the viewers of this post not want to follow yours and pm track?
GO TO A SMALL COMMAND...OR YOU REALLY WANT TO WORK WITH PREGNANT WOMEN/CHILDREN/PSYCH....
Now having said that...before all the hate mail starts to bombard me. I'm not trashing/downing talking bad about fellow sailors (especially pm). It's been an honor and priviledge serving and I look foreward to serving out my time. I'm merely pointing out there is a HUGE workload disparity in nursing and I think new nurses joining the navy should have some insight before they talk to their detailer. Large command med/surg you WILL ABSOLUTELY work your tail off. You will look foreward to the few days when you only have 4 patients two of them is A&O and can walk.
It's pretty interesting reading through all the posts. Are there any east coast MTF's med/surg floors out there where the age of patients range from 18-100 average = 75? Usual patient load is 5-6 patients ranging from post-op TKA/Whipple/drug-ETOH withdrawl to comfort care and everything in between.
Here, here! I am a lurker here, keep thinking about joining but talk myself out of it. Unfortunately, med-surg is an incredibly hard area. Having had experience in M/S, Onco and ICU I can say they can all be equally hard but in different ways.
Depending on the unit, M/S night may be incrdibly busy or fairly slow; again, depends on the pt mix. I have had 1 pt in ICU and was lucky to go to the bathroom 3 times in 12 hours. I have had 2 leukemics and been at a dead run most of the shift.
Nursing is hard all around. Here in TX there are medical units taking up to 8 pt's, frequently with no NA. If you are going to stay in nursing, and thrive, you have to find what you love and become an expert in that area. If you don't love it, you'll hate it-who wants to spend their career like that?
Read some of the postings, wanted to let you know that in the Navy you might not be able to leave a Med/Surg floor after 12 month if their are no avaible other units to transfer to and your stuck in Med/Surg whether you like it our not, try to avoid small command state side, not sure about the overseas. some nursing spend 18-24 months in Med/surg
There's good and bad with every job. I've been discussing most of the bad on this thread b/c I'm tired M/S nursing. Let me point out some of the good.
If you don't like your work areas you usually won't spend more than 2-3yrs there. If you don't like your coworkers, boss, docs or who ever... don't worry they'll be gone pretty soon too. However, the opposite is also true. (Everything's going great...enjoy it...it won't last long) The only thing constant in the military is change. 10yrs and I haven't paid a dime for healthcare. Luckily, my healthcare needs are minimal. Now that I'm married and raising kids it adds up quick. In 10yrs I can walk away from the military with a pretty good pension which I didn't contribute a dime to and healthcare I'll pay $460/yr. I live in cali and claim Fl as my state of residency(no state tax, significantly reduced auto registration) and I don't pay (fed)taxes on approx 35-40% of my income. If you come to the Navy with prior nursing experience it's recognized and you'll come in at a higher rank or less time to make the next pay grade. (1:2) My friends with nursing experience had one year knocked off to make the next pay grade for every two years of NURSING experience.
If you don't like M/S chances are you won't do it for long unless you get suckered like I did. The vast majority navy nurses I've talked to skirted around M/S but never really got dirty. Unfortunately the nurse corps treats M/S nursing like a auto accident. Everyone likes to slow down and look so they can say they saw the accident but no one wants to stop(it might explode or something). I say it's unfortunate b/c large command M/S should be used as a training area like docs do. I've worked closely with several nurses who transferred from small commands M/S and they were stressed like someone straight out of school. But, at least these nurses worked M/S at a small command and were able to take patients. (our floats from peds/psych/OB (RN's) usually end up just sitting 1:1) (I'd love to get paid to read a book and watch one old disoriented person) There are a lot of nurses at large commands who go straight into peds/psych/OB who rarely touch M/S, and from what I've seen it looks like the retention rate is a lot higher for nurses who don't work the heavy M/S so the cycle of not training on heavy M/S perpetuates itself. The point is...if you want to be a nurse without dirty patients...it's pretty easy to get.
If you do get suckered into working (or just like it) M/S, the pt are pretty good. Unless they're really out of their mind(this happens a lot), they're cooperative and understanding. We really work our butts off and the patients often state we give the best care they've ever had and they love coming to our floor. Our equipment is old, beat up and doesn't work a lot , the accomodation are meager but the patients are sooo greatful for your service...so, it's rewarding in that aspect.
Read some of the postings, wanted to let you know that in the Navy you might not be able to leave a Med/Surg floor after 12 month if their are no avaible other units to transfer to and your stuck in Med/Surg whether you like it our not, try to avoid small command state side, not sure about the overseas. some nursing spend 18-24 months in Med/surg
Every nurse on my floor stays min 24 months if this is their 1st command no matter where you want to go. Some who've wanted to transfer to ICU stayed 36mos.
I am in the process of filling out the application for NNC and I have to reply to the question about the pay in civilian vs military nursing. I will have 3 years of BSN prepared nursing experience when I go in (if everything goes well) and my pay will be extremely comparable with what I am making in the civilian world. I actually have a total of 8 years nursing experience but only my BSN experience goes toward time served which is a downfall for coming in, but I would have to say that with all of the other benefits the Navy has to offer I am willing to take the plunge. Plus no one can ever take away the actual experience that I have learned and have to offer the NNC. Plus I am at a cross roads with my career as a nurse and am very open minded as to what my duties will be when I come in. So I am looking forward to the surprise.
I didn't realize that these messages were from so long ago, but I would like to say that from reading the forum it has helped to make some things clearer on my journey into the NNC and thank you to those who took the time to respond to peoples' questions.
I am in the process of joining the NNC (doing physical and interviews March 7th 08) and have read all your threads. I have been working as a Nurse Extern for 8 years and as an RN for a year as a pediatrics and rehabilitation nurse.
All I can say is that in my world (civilian in Chicago) pretty much sucks, there are very few programs where they pay for your continuing education, traveling is dependent on if you have PTO time and money to go, I have to pay for medical insurance and pricey copays, don't get BAH, and student loans are killing me!!! Yes I make more as a civilian world but believe me I have calculated how much I pay for insurance, student loans, certification class etc.. and I am making less then being in the military. I want to persue my education and obtain my masters degree free or charge as a PNP, do voluntary deployments on the Comfort and Mercy and just get as many experiences as I can!! My husband was in the NAVY for 10 years and had noting but good experiences so I decided why not join. I know where ever I get placed my experiences will be what I make them to be not the other way around I know what I want and I will not let any bad apples in the bunch get to me. How much harder can it be then dealing with the BS I already deal with? With this being said I would love to have positive mentors as yourselves and I am very intrested in speaking with you both personally. I will be going to visit the Naval Hospital in SD on the 19-21, are you still stationed there?
kookinitreal
35 Posts
Sir,
This could go on forever. Again, I agree with you 100% I say send all accessions to one of the big 3 hospitals and make them all work the med/surg floor. Once you've worked the floor for a year then you can go to peds/mother-baby/psych/ED/OR/ICU or whatever your fancy. Your right...I've been on the busiest med/surg floor in the Navy for 18mos and I can work circles around just about every nurse regardless of how long they've been a nurse. When I float to another floor "hey, just tell me what patients I have...and the combo to the med room" and I'm set. Here's the unfortunate reality check...
Ens pm (I don't know this person) he/she probaby a great peds nurse...does everything he/she is asked...great all around sailor. (I'm just using her/him b/c she/he has a lot of posts on this site) (not trying to single you out p.m. so don't get mad. just using you as an example for danzrn)
PM is a (7p-7a) peds nurse. This is just a blind guess...But I'm willing to bet this nurse has what I would call an extremely easy patient load. So here's a pm peds nurse with probably not a lot of nursing skill (nothing personal p.m.) who has been sent out to the fleet and has been told she/he will be able to crosstrain to a specialty area after she/he has worked the peds floor for a year. OK...Now here we have all the nurses that work up on the upper 4th & 5th deck. A lot of great nurses with a lot of skills who are taking care of really sick people day and night. (barely enough time to pee and go to lunch) I haven't seen any of these nurses have any priority when it comes to going on deployments/or crosstraining. So here we are...doing the real dirty work with no incentive...want to go from peds/mother-baby/psych to the ICU/ED/OR...(no problem) even though the folks on 4 and 5 take care of these patients everyday. Want to go on a 3 month cruise(with only peds pm experience)...no problem.
You and pm seem to really love navy nursing, and that's great...(I wasn't there so I don't know for sure) but when asked by the hospital detailer where you wanted to work I doubt they said "we are overstaffed in the med/surg dept. Could you pick some other dept to work." It probably went something like this "I'm really excited about being a Navy nurse. I have such and such experience. I would really like to work in (blank) dept." I don't understand how being a peds night nurse makes for a more qualified ED/ICU/OR nurse...but it really doesn't matter...
If the navy was serious about having more experienced general nurses they would send everyone upstairs for a while. You wouldn't have the opportunity to be a pm peds nurse(1st year out of school) and go on a float(pm I'm really not trying to pick on you). Who's dodging what? I'm sure you and pm had the opportunity to go med/surg...and you didn't...that's ok. Doesn't sound like it held either of you back. In fact, you're both doing better than me. Why would the viewers of this post not want to follow yours and pm track?
GO TO A SMALL COMMAND...OR YOU REALLY WANT TO WORK WITH PREGNANT WOMEN/CHILDREN/PSYCH....