texas_shaka

I took a pay cut when I joined if you only look at your rank pay. However, I got Hawaii as my duty station and my BAH (housing allowance) is $3100 a month. So now I am making more (technically) but in a much more expensive location. Now, you could get a cheaper place and pocket that extra BAH and make up for some of the pay cut or use it all, it is up to you. If I were to take my cost of living/bills/insurance etc. as a RN in Texas and compare it to my living/bills/insurance etc. (not to mention milk is $6/gallon out here and the gas for a Tahoe each month is YIKES) then yeah, maybe I still have a bit of a pay cut comparatively. However, where you REALLY see that paycut become negligible is when you need to use your health insurance. I had a bad hiking accident and needed knee surgery. Consults, MRIs, X-rays, meds, the surgery, follow-ups, and pretty extensive physical therapy program is all FREE. My wife had the same surgery before I joined and got a pretty hefty bill of 15k even after insurance covered some of it. @jfratian made a lot of good points in regards to pay comparisons. Additionally, the Army provides you with tons of experiences, training, and benefits that you can't get civilian side. If you join for the $$$, then there are a lot more lucrative ways to bolster your bank account. There is a lot of BS that goes on in the military. But for a lot of us, it is worth it.

If you want to join as an ICU nurse (AOC 66S in the Army), you need 2 years of ICU experience preferably in a Trauma 1/University hospital. You can join as a med-surg nurse, work a little while, then apply for the Army's critical care course in San Antonio. Upon graduation, you'd be an ICU nurse. Yes, 7 days (or nights) every pay period (2 weeks) for a total of 84 hours. It depends. I'm stationed in Hawaii, a lot of my coworkers in Hawaii are assigned to a unit in Korea. Some Ft. Hood. Some Washington. Some Colorado. All over, really.

If you search around in the boards you can get a lot of info on different people's experiences. I joined a little over a year ago as an ICU nurse with 2 years of ICU civilian experience. So far, I am loving it. Why do you want to join the military? For me, it was because I wanted to take my ICU nursing to a different level and train to operate in austere environments and take care of our soldiers/vets/dependents. Most days, I feel like I never left the civilian world. I work 12 hour shifts and wear scrubs and my care is no different than being an ICU nurse as a civilian. However, I am getting sent to Colorado for a month to train and set up and run a field hospital. Deployment depends what your MOS is (ICU nurse, ER, med-surg, etc.) and who you are assigned to. I work at a hospital but I am assigned to a military unit. If they deploy, most likely I will go with them. If this is really something you want to do, I would talk to an AMEDD recruiter and be prepared for at least a year of applying, getting accepted, and awaiting orders to you first duty assignment.

I would get 2 years of ER experience especially if it is at a level 1 or 2. DO great there and get certified. Learn as much as you can. I commissioned as a 66S (ICU nurse) after 2 years of experience at a level 1 trauma center. Your letters of recommendation and your experience will help you get accepted. Direct commissions are a little more on the rare side, but we exist! Haha. Also, Army medicine is going through a massive transition period right now. It is probably not the best to apply right now until the dust settles a bit. Seems like there is a bit of a freeze going on.

Yes we do have a few 66S reserve nurses. Will you be working full time at Tripler or will you still be at your current hospital? I don’t know too much about the reserve side. I know that you’ll eventually do the field portion of BOLC for training.

Tripler is great! Love Hawaii and the Army ICU nurses I’ve met are awesome. Very knowledgeable and really care about their career and their patients. My OIC/NCOICs also really care about us and work hard to get us the opportunity to do “Army” stuff like Air Assault and JECC. I unfortunately tore my ACL on a hike out here and have been recovering from surgery and all that so I feel like I haven’t been able to do much yet that’s very different from being a regular civilian ICU nurse. But so far, it has been a great experience.

So yeah the recruiters have a date to submit everything so it’ll get approved to go to the board. This helps prevent submitting incomplete packets. Hopefully that’s the case for you.

It’s not the phone call that you want it’s your orders. The phone call was just like a courtesy “welcome to the team” call. I got my orders in my personal email a little over a month before my DCC starting date. So that’s enogh notice for your employers. To give you a good estimate of when you’d go to DCC, go to this site: https://sill-www.army.mil/30ADA/AMEDD_DCC.html under “admin info” at the bottom, you’ll see all the class dates. Looks like the next one for Active Duty is 10 June. Which means you’d be on the same timeline I was. DCC 10 June to 8 July then BOLC from 10 July to 14 September. I would expect your orders to come this month hopefully!

Actually, I am Active Duty. And my recruiter and I also got my packet submitted super quick to make the earlier boards of the fiscal year. And I kept getting mixed info from my recruiter and the Internet. I assumed I would submit my packet by December, get notified if I was accepted or not in a month, then hopefully go to DCC/BOLC in March. Well unfortunately that’s not the case for *most* people. In fact, talking with other direct commissions, my packet went thru way quicker than most. I was notified of my acceptance in January 2018. And an officer from San Antonio called me at some point shortly after and said I probably wouldn’t actually go to training until September, for this reason and that reason on and on. There is a reason that “hurry up and wait” is an Army mantra. What you can do on your end is make sure your packet is complete and fix and discrepancies as quickly as possible. Read every word of your contract. Swear in as soon as you can once you’re accepted so that you can get the ball rolling on getting your orders ASAP.

I commissioned back in March 2018, went to DCC/BOLC in the summer of 2018 and am now stationed at Tripler in Hawaii. I am a 66S (ICU nurse) DCC - 4 weeks of hurry up and wait, with a few days doing "Army" things like the obstacle course, range time, going thru the gas chamber, etc. You stay in the barracks, do PT, march to chow, go to class, lights out by 10. It is basically an officer's crash course into the military while getting everything in line (paperwork, uniforms, etc.) It is in Ft. Sill, OK. BOLC - 2ish months of more structured training. It is a gentleman's course so you live in a hotel and don't have to march everywhere, can leave post, etc. Unlike DCC, it is run by medical officers (mostly 70Bs). You have a month of classwork where you learn about the structure of medical forces in the Army. This is mostly geared towards the 70Bs and a lot of it you won't have to worry about too much in your career. However, the Army is in a huge transition period (moving from AMEDD to DHA) which is resulting in a huge restructuring of how the Army does things. Anyways, BOLC is fun. Show up at the right time in the right uniform and you'll be good. The second half of BOLC was in the field for about a month, but you come back to the hotel on the weekends. I had a blast. You do land nav, combatives, weapons qual, set up Roles I, II, and III, CBRNE, etc. I loved it. The last part of BOLC is the nurse track. It is about 2 weeks long and is mostly geared for all the new ROTC nurses going to med-surg but the direct commissions founds some useful info too. You'll renew your BLS and speak, do some leadership stuff, and just get an idea of what it is like to be an Army nurse. ***If you are a direct commission and the Army gave you credit towards rank for your prior experience as a nurse, when you get your AD DA 71, send it to HRC so you can make sure you are promoted on time. I did not know this and as a result, I have to wait 6 month to be promoted to 1LT even though technically I am already promotable. (I will get back pay, but it is just a hassle). This is a really brief and short summary of DCC/BOLC. If you have any specific questions, please feel free to PM me or ask here!

I boarded last December 2017, went to DCC and BOLC in the summer and am now stationed at Tripler Army Medical Center. I am a 66S (ICU nurse). If you have any questions, feel free to PM me, or I can respond here. There aren't too many direct commissions so I found that getting the right info was a bit tricky at times. Cheers!

If you were referring to me, you can PM me and Ill send it to you.

It was personal. I could have commissioned the next day after I received my official scroll if I had wanted to. But I had some family things come up that made me hesitant. I made the right decision by commissioning, though. At least I think so thus far.

I was officially scrolled in February but did not commission until 12 March, which delayed my official orders being cut a little bit. I received my unofficial orders 27 April and that was through HRC and I basically verified all the information on it and "accepted" the orders in a sense. I received official orders from my recruiter the following week. Hope this helps!

I direct commissioned as a nurse with 2 years of experience. I was offered loan repayment for 3 years commitment (plus 5 IRR) or loan repayment and 10k specialty bonus for 4 years (and 5 IRR). From what I've heard, there is hardly any difference between Commander and Chief's, except that the military budget has been expanding and now we are in a rebuild period so they are, in a sense, accepting more people right now. As for PT, in DCC you will take a diagnostic PT test consisting of 2 minutes pushups, sit ups, and 2 mile run. As an officer, you are expected to hold yourself to a higher standard and at least score a 90 in each event. The new PT test should roll out in October but it is still in the testing phase. I am not sure when it is replacing the current APFT. DCC is a 4 week long in processing into the military. It is supposed to give you some basic fundamentals. Really, it was a lot of waiting around. We lived in barracks, wore our uniforms 24/7, did some PT, got medical, dental, optometry done, learned how to wear our uniforms, learned basic army stuff like troop leading procedures, UCMJ, ROE, etc. You did not have a lot of freedom there but it was not nearly as strict or intense as regular enlisted BCT. It is in Ft. Sill, OK and it was HOT. My class had 270 soldiers and most of them were first year medical students. There were only 5 nurses there. All in all, I was happy to get to BOLC. BOLC - I just finished my first week. It is in San Antonio, TX. Most people are 70B ROTC soldiers, West Point grads, veterinarians, and a good amount of fresh out of nursing school nurses. Ive only met one other nurse so far who worked prior to commissioning as an RN. So far, it is pretty great. It is well organized, you live in a hotel, you are free once the day is over. We have about a month of classroom instruction with two tests, followed by 3 weeks of FTX, then BOLC graduation, then you do a few weeks of training specific to your MOS. For nurses, it is 2 weeks of skills lab etc. You have weekends off and can enjoy San Antonio. If you get above 270 on the APFT, you can also apply for a pass to travel outside of the SA, TX area. After BOLC, I will be PCSing to Hawaii. All in all, I am enjoying my Army nursing experience so far. Hope this helps a bit!