PNP IN AF OR NAVY

PNP09 · Oct 15, 2011

Hello... A couple of questions: do you have any military experience and how much nursing experience do you have?

Many who will reply will be people with a lot of active duty time, which presents a significantly different experience in terms of salary and job satisfaction. If you have any prior service time, that can count toward a higher pay rate for you. The Navy will not give you pay entry base credit for your civilian experience, so you will essentially come in with zero years of service. This has an impact on how you compare salaries with your civilian counterparts. I have heard from many longtime Navy nurse practitioners that they make far more than their civilian counterparts, but most of them started out in the Navy as new nurses and were sent back to school by the Navy. Which means that they have more time credited for pay and rank and little to no student loan debt. Its a pretty sweet deal if you did it that way. I will tell you what it is like for those who come in direct accession. No student loan repayment on your first commitment and no RN-ISP on your first commitment. Those items are meant to be used for retention purposes. They will evaluate the amount of time that you have practiced as an RN with a Bachelor's degree and divide that in half (example 8years as a BSN, 4 years credit). They will give you 100 percent credit for the time you spent in your full time ARNP Program. If you were an ADN for 10 years and just got your BSN, you get no credit and will likely lose money. They were offering RN sign on bonuses and you can probably qualify for one of those. I don't mean to sound focused on the pay, because the service aspect is so very important and something I consider to be invaluable, however, it is something you must consider.

They typically want you to move every 3 years. Your job is obviously the care of military dependents, but there will be collateral duties as well. You are deployable as a PNP, probably more for humanitarian efforts. But also as a nurse, although that probably isn't likely. Military life has positives and negatives, it really depends on you and what you need. Do you have a family? How old are your children? What kind of work does your spouse do? Do you want to commit to full time? The PNP field is very specialized and used at specific locations. There is another post by a Navy PNP named Tim (actually a response to my own similar question) that gives a good list of the places where PNPs are used as well as other useful information.

I would suggest that you find a PNP that is able to let you shadow them... For more than a few hours, probably at least a week. That way you can see not only the clinical aspect, but any other expectations that there may be. It allows you to really evaluate the kind of fit that it would be for you. If it isn't, you could always work in an MTF As a civilian contractor and still provide that service to the valued military members and their dependents without the impact of moving, etc on your family. It can be difficult to find jobs in these economic times for spouses. Best wishes! I hope this reply doesn't come too late!

Really do your homework! Get what you are worth!

danceluver · Feb 4, 2012

@crazylilkelly: did you ever find out how PNP are used in these branches? Are they ever deployed?

allnurses Guide · Feb 5, 2012

There will be few if any deployments for PNP in the AF. A PNP is going to deploy as 46N3/medsurg/clinic nurse most of the time.