NAVY RN

That's interesting. It seemed like all the civilian nurses at NNMC had to have many years of experience before they were hired.

Prior Enlisted HM3 Great Lakes HM Class 97-230!

Of course when you think of the Navy you think of ships, but in all actuality Nurses do not belong on ships. Most ships need only a medical officer and a few corpsmen. The bigger ships, i.e. Air craft carriers only have 1 nurse (not including any OR RN's that may be there) for the nearly 5000 sailors there. That nurse is there mainly for training, quality assurance and emergencies. You have to have either ER or ICU experience to be a nurse on a ship. As far as treating STD's on a ship...the corpsmen have that covered. You will see that when you join the Navy, the corpsmen do more than you would ever expect. Being a former corpsman on a ship. I don't remember ever seeing a nurse deal with an STD. It was always the corpsman and IDC (Indepent Duty Corpsman aka Super Corpsman). However, there are ships in the Navy (two to be exact) that are specifically made for Nurses, Doctors and Corpsmen. These are the hospital ships. If you ever have a chance to be assigned to one of these ships, you should jump on that opportunity. These ships only deploy for a few months out of the year. But these hospital ships have more capabilities than many hospitals. Your boyfriend obviously has a very negative attitude about the Navy. And I cannot argue the fact that there are some jobs in the Navy that suck ass. But being a Nurse Corp Officer is not one of them.

I wish I could tell you about Balboa, but I just left the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Those two hospitals plus Naval Medical Center Portsmouth, Virginia are known as the "Big 3" in Navy medicine. They are all very similar to each other. And after saying all of that, I know that NNMC Bethesda did NOT hire new civilian nurses. The 12 week new nurse orientation was for new Ensigns.

I want to restructure the orientation that the hospital corpsmen (Navy's version of medical assistant/LPN). Currently, the corpsmen with more experience are teaching/orienting the new corpsmen to the ward. This orientation phase is about a month long. The new orientee works five 8 hour days per week, instead of the 12 hour shifts that all other corpsmen work. During this month they are taught the typical corpsmen stuff like starting IV's, drawing blood, transporting patients, managing chest tubes, inserting foleys, a.m. care, counting intake/output, etc. My concern is that the orientation is not optimal. I feel that the training is getting diluted as the teaching is passed down from one corpsman to another. I know that I definitely want to involve the nurses more in their training. For those of you that don't know. After 14 weeks of medical/first aid/BLS training a Navy hospital corpsman can do as much as a Nurse or Doctor allows for them to do (wow, that seems crazy after writing it, but it works). Especially when we're in situations that are not overseen by Joint Commissions. They work under the RN's or MD's license. So my real question is, how would you structure an orientation for these people who in many cases you depend on to be your eyes/ears/arms?

I read somewhere that private practices may actually attract more clientele by advertising a specialty rather than offering a "general" practice. For example, rather than advertising yourself as a "family care clinic". You could advertise as a "pain clinic". I'm not sure if that was the best example...but you get the idea. The reason being is that you appeal to patients as a specialist in this category and you separate yourself from the rest of the family practice clinics. As long as you aren't advertising falsely I presume. Do you all agree with this philosophy?

From my experience working with many of its graduates, the University of Maryland in Baltimore has an excellent Critical Care/Trauma NP/CNS program.

In ATLS I was taught to do cutdowns, but this should only be used after a peripheral/central/intraosseous access attempt has failed. The most common place to do a cutdown is at the great saphenous (sp?) vein at the ankle. If you're doing a cutdown, infection is the last thing you are worried about. At this point saving the person's life is the priority.

Hello, I'm currently pursuing an MBA part-time. I'm an active duty Navy nurse and I'm hoping this will help me understand the operation of military healthcare and when I get out civilian healthcare as well. I'm looking to see what types of jobs those nurses out there with MBA's or comparative graduate degrees are doing. What did you intend to do with your degree and what are you actually doing? Any nurses out there in charge of operations or ceo's by chance?

That sounds about right. I spent some time at Bethesda and it was the same there. However, I'm overseas now and on the ward the nurses wear their uniform (khaki's) on Monday's and Friday's. All other days they wear the unit issued scrubs. The scrubs are color coded per department. Med/Surg=Teal. ICU=Blue. L&D=Pink. ER=Grey. Believe it or not, you actually get used to working the wards in your khaki's. But the scrubs are definitely much more comfortable. However it does cause some confusion as to who's who sometimes (i.e. corpsmen vs nurse vs doctor)