izzycatswimRN

When I applied I asked if I had to have a maryland license since I am military. I was told I had to have one by the admissions department. Ill call again tmrw and double check though.

Hi everyone! I'm currently a military RN stationed in Maryland. I'm about to start grad school at UMD this fall and need a Maryland nursing license. I have two questions that I can't get an answer to. Why I apply for licensure via endorsement does my current license remain active until the application goes through and is approved? Also has anyone who has done this before here in MD how long did it take? Thanks in advance!

Hello! I'm currently stationed at Walter Reed Bethesda. Been here slightly more than 2 years. Not sure who told you there are no housing options near base because there are a ton! I lived in DC proper my first year and took the train. I currently live on top of the White Flint metro. Craigslist has been my apartment finding miracle. Lots of nice places to rent within the limits of an O1 BAH. As someone else said don't count in lots of people coming with you from ODS. 3 other nurses came with me from my ODS class. Only one is still here. I've opted to live alone which has been great for me, especially when I rotate to nights every 2 months. Regarding comraderie, I worked in day surgery and now on a regular med-surg ward. No one on my floor eats the young. Our civilians are all excellent as well as the fellow navy and army nurses I work with. I'm not sure if it was you who also commented about time worked but on my floor we generally work 84 hrs a pay period and switch days/nights every two months. If you have more questions abt Bethesda please feel free to Shoot me a message and ask! This hospital has given me great experiences, particularly on my floor where we care for many wounded warriors. It is unlike anything I thought I would get to do!

I'm currently stationed at Bethesda and have been for over a year now. I just want to throw out there the CNTP is 25 weeks....BUT it's not 25 weeks of floating all over the hospital. I was one of the last bunches to do the original 10 week intern period. Now they do 10 weeks floating about the hospital but then the other 15 are on their assigned floor. I believe it's supposed to be like 10 with a preceptor then 5 "on your own". I know two girls on my floor our chain of command has already let them work on their own but keeps them listed on orientation status on our schedule. Apparently the floors have to send the work schedule of those still considered CNTP to the Navy LCDR in charge of it. Hopefully this helps anyone coming to Bethesda to not freak out as much!

I went to nursing school at Georgia State so I'm a little biased.

As a whole ODS wasn't hard to me at all. The worst parts for me were getting up at 4am every day and only eat three meals a day. I'm more of a multiple small meals throughout the day kind of person. My body never adjusted to it. Otherwise it's a lot of just class time about the military...aka death by powerpoint.

When people talk about collaterals I guess they could be extra duties like BLS/ACLS instructor. When you get assigned a floor you get a collateral for that unit. Currently, we have people dealing with supply, PFA coordinator, training folder manager, etc. Personally, I'm in charge of making sure myself and 40 other staff (military RN, civilians, and corpsmen) have their certification current to use glucometers as well as do urine hcG testing. Jus my two cents on that.

I am also an ENS at a major military medical facility. No I don't have kids. If you count moving nearly 1000 miles away from all my family then yes? Otherwise I have a live-in boyfriend. He's gone more than I am of late. I'm usually at the hospital around 12 hours a day. Never been deployed as of yet. I hear they are getting ready to switch the coasts they are really drawing medical staff from again in the near future so I suspect/expect to have my card drawn most likely when it does come around. It's ok. I want to be deployed at some point. I also went through the NCP and currently have a commitment of 4 years active duty and 4 reserves at this point. I simply act as a nurse..you know patient care. I currently work in day surgery but will be moving to an inpatient ward in the next few months. I also have a collateral duty. Wherever you end up floor wise you will end up with a collateral of some sort.

I'm not sure that accounts for the new uniforms everyone gets now starting with my class back in March. You get two sets of khakis, summer whites, dress whites, dress blues, and two pairs of blue digitals. Add the cost of all the alterations that will be made to most of them..and the shoes...each bit of gold strip/collar device/rank bars...AND all the stuff you get the first couple days (PT gear, sweats, etc) and it adds up quick. I was shocked. Mine was somewhere in the neighborhood of $1950s. I had shipmates who were over 2 grand.

You will pay out of pocket. While there, you can open a Star account credit card and you'll get a 10% discount on your first purchase...so long as you hold off and let that purchase be your uniforms. Otherwise you can expect to pay about 2000 for uniforms. The Navy only gives officers $400 to help pay for our uniforms.

For what it's worth, I graduated from Georgia State's nursing school. Maybe the gen ed profs outside of the SON are a pain (lord knows most of mine were and that's saying something since I transferred into State from Georgia Tech, notorious for annoying profs it seems). In the nursing school the teachers are WONDERFUL. They know you by your first name, were always easy to locate and get in touch with. Many of them even went out of their way to give us a heads up if they might be incommunicado for any reason. I loved my experience there. It was very challenging but I know I learned alot. It's showing because I constantly get positive remarks in my current job in the Navy.

Ga State start as one 8 hr for basic skills and assessment if I remember correctly. They you move in to two 8 hour clinicals a week during psych and medsurg (if you have those in the regular semester. Summer semseters do 12 hr shifts). Third semester goes to 12 hr shifts. The last semester was an 8hr shift for community then whatever you schedule for your senior practicum. The days of the week were something like Thurs or Fri for semester 1. During semester two you might get Sat/Sun, Tue/Wed, or I think Tue/Thurs? dont quote me on those. Third semester was similar to second. and again the last semester is it's own beast. If you did the ACE program and had clinicals in the summer they were almost all on weekends. I think there was one group for each class that had clinicals during the week during the summer.

shot you an email. it's from a gmail account.

You can PM me if you would like. I did the ACE program at Ga State. Just finished back this past December.

It took a number of weeks for my orders to come through the pipeline after I heard from my detailer where he was sending me.

I'm currently an RN in the Navy right now. I can tell you from what I hear psych nurses are needed...and PNPs. Now specific locations are in the air. What we hear from the pipeline is just what's needed navy wide. There's a place we can look (not sure if the public can access it) that tells us how many billets there are for each sub-specialty and if they are 100% manned or what.

Bethesda and Walter Reed are combining. Fort Belvoir is it's own Army hospital, though they have been asking for volunteers at Bethesda. There are some Air Force nurses currently working in Bethesda. I have no clue about AF nurses being able to go to Fort Belvoir when it opens.

Granted I'm not a male and the couple single males who came to my station with me aren't on this site but we don't have an O-club as far as I've seen. The big hospital bases are pretty much just that..big hospitals surrounded by fencing. There's a NEX, some barracks, etc but no O-club...but this could be due to a little construction going on. Who knows. If you have any questions in specific you can message me and I can ask my friends.

I just finished the officer training....Officer Development School...5 weeks ago. They teach you some of what you need to know..how to wear the uniform, rankings, how an officer should act and lead, etc. But after having been at my station for 5 weeks now I am almost positive I'm going to learn the most by being in the military environment. It's been pretty different IMO than how they made the military sound at ODS. This may be a "to each his own" kind of thing being that this is just my opinion/experience. If you have any more specific questions about ODS let me know and I'll see what I can come up with.

I didn't have to have it. I knew I took it like every other highschooler back in the day but my recruiter said it wasn't relavent.

We received a username/password to the internet in our building. It's very restricted though. No social networks or personal email. They are all blocked. There is an internet cafe where you can get on any website...except craig'slist...but you don't get liberty there until after a few weeks. So....yeah. That's how I've been getting online. 3 weeks down! 2 more!

Been reading my Kindle every night for a few minutes while lying in bed to unwind. They never said we couldn't have that. Just cell phones were labeled "contraband". Just keep it stowed in the bottom drawer in your locker. That way no one can pull the doors away and get to it.

You get divided up into 3 groups based on your in-pfa run time. Since we only have our chief and one CO PT'ing in the am with us the medium group gets split between the fast and slow groups. I have no idea what pace we are holding in the fast group since that's where I keep getting stuck.

I didn't do anything special. Former swimmer, kickboxed at an MMA gym for the last year. Worked on my push-ups and abs. Coming with a strong core will help you out. Also just running. We have been running 1.5 miles three times a week these first two weeks. Were supposed to do our first 3 miler today but the weather was too cold. It's actually snowing right now. Make sure you can do at least 3 miles with as much ease as possible.

No cell phones until they tell you to. They are very serious about that. While you are at ODS you are supposed to be concentrating on the task(s) at hand. It sucks for people like me who are used to talking to family every day. You get used to it. Now, if there is some emergency you can ask permission to call but it's up to your class officers to say yes you can make that one call or no you can't. So far only one person needed to do that but that was because she had someone stationed in Japan and was trying to find out if they were okay. In that situation the class officers also used their sources to find out if my shipmate's family was safe. You can read for pleasure if you can find time. Church goers can go on their Sabbath days. I only read a few minutes at night right before I sleep. You will have what is called a gouge book to carry around everywhere so you should probably really concentrate on it for reading for a while as you have to know most of the info in it. All but two days so far have started with getting up at 0415 to muster by 0445 and then PT. Days go solid until dinner chow...sometimes even past that. I think the latest day we have had ended at 2000. I would highly suggest about $400 in cash as you don't have access to an ATM right away and you have to pay for the chow hall to your class mess treasurerer. That's about $80 a week. I have my debit card but I havn't used it until this past week when we had a little down time and I bought a 3rd PT shirt. Speaking of I would get at least 3 of the PT shirts. You wear them all the first week. We spend lots of time in a class room. You will hear the phrase "death by powerpoint" and they aren't even kidding. I think today we have 3.5 hours of class time in the morning, then lunch chow, then another 2+ hours.