Taking 1 year off before joining the US navy and questions.

If nobody's contacting you after you've filled out the form on the Navy.com website you can try googling "Navy recruiter (your city)" to find your local navy recruiters. These will be enlisted recruiters but you can call them up and ask if they can put you in contact with a Health Care Officer Recruiter; I got a number for a health care recruiter from an enlisted recruiter when I started trying to apply. You can also tell us what state you are in and maybe someone here will know the number for the appropriate recruiter due to experience.

Good luck.

I would talk to a recruiter before I took a year off. With the high number of applications all the branches of the service are getting right now, taking a year off might hurt - not saying it will, but it might. So I'd talk to that health professions recruiter before I made any final plans.

I live in California. The only navy recruiter in the city I live is is an enlisted recruiter, but definitely that's a good advice about talking to a recruiter first.

Then you need to get the number of the health professions recruiter for your area and talk to him/her, because the enlisted recruiter is not going to have the answers you need.

Thanks for the information. I'll definitely contact the recruiter before I make any plans. I'm still learning and still have so much questions that I'll try using this forum as a resource for now.

Once I get a hold of the recruiter, and ask the necessary questions for my plans to join the navy as a nurse, what happens after that? I fill out the necessary information in the application, send it, and wait? How long is the wait usually? How do I know when I get accepted? what happens if I get denied to the navy? I understand with the way the economy is now, the demands is much lower.

It's not an application so much as it is a package. There's a slew of paperwork, a required physical, reviews of your stuff before it's officially sent - it takes a while, sometimes as long as a year. Once your package is reviewed by the board, your recruiter will be contacted and you'll be offered a slot. I know with the Air Force, if you're rejected by the board, you can apply one more time in six months - but even if that's the case with the USN, there's nothing to stop you from applying to another service (it just means you have ANOTHER package to complete because they're not all the same).

Hello, I've been browsing and reading a lot of the topics in the military/government nursing forum of allnurses and searching for topics regarding navy nurses, and they have been really helpful, although vague at times. I am thinking of joining the navy in 2 years. I graduated with my BSN in May 2006, I have been working in med-surg/telemetry, and a make-shift step-down unit since then, so 4 years now. I love traveling and seeing the world. I just came back from a 2 week travel vacation in Asia and it was so wonderful, sadly that was the first time I've really taken that much time off and went anywhere for a vacation out of the country.

I actually wanted to join the navy after high school simply because the military recruiter went to my classroom and talked about the U.S. military, they talked about benefits, opportunities, and a chance to see the world. That last part got me hook and was the most enticing part, the chance to see the world and travel. I don't now if that is realistic or not. But I just want to get out of the town I live in, which is a small farming community with nothing to do.

My plan right now is to work another year or so, take 1 year off to travel and see the world, and join the navy afterwards. I'm a single guy, so I don't have any kids at the moment to worry about or a mortgage also to worry about. My car is paid for already. So I'm not really tied down to anything at the moment.

My questions are:

1. How and where can I contact a navy nurse recruiter? Can anyone provide me with that information? I went to the navy.com website, and all I have to enter some information and hope for a recruiter to contact me. I read in this forum that is usually not the best way since they don't reply all the time.

2. Is it a good idea good quit my job to take some time off before joining the navy? Do they require me to have a current job before joining? I read somewhere that I need to have a current job and references such as letters of recommendations, I don't know. I really want to take some time off for about 1 year before joining the U.S. navy.

3. Eventually my goal is to be stationed at a naval hospital in Japan. I know I won't be stationed there right away since I have to work my way up first, but that's one of the places I want to work in, how realistic is it? How long do I have to wait before they even consider that?

4. How often do you get deployed out to sea and for how long, how often do you move?

5. Lastly, what kind of questions do you recommend that I ask when I do finally get hold of the navy nurse recruiter that you can suggest to me? Asking questions is sort of my weakness.

1. Just google the phone number for a local recruiter, even if it's an enlisted recruiter, they will have the phone number to the officer recruiter available.

2. I would contact a recruiter before you quit your job, just to see what he says. I'm pretty sure he will say don't leave your job since you will need letters of reference (within the last 6 months) and character references. Plus you will need to submit a resume and you leaving your job will be something that the board will look at and wonder why you chose to do that.

3. Japan as your first duty station is probably not going to happen, but it may. You will submit a "wish list" or "dream sheet" of about three places you want to go, and if that's where the Navy needs you then they will send you there. However, you should be realistic about what you pick since they typically send you to a hospital in the states first (San Diego, Portsmouth, Pensacola, Bethesda, Jacksonville, etc.).

4. You move duty stations, on average, every three years. As for deployments, there is no set timeline. Usually what happens is the command will get a notice that they need a nurse for a particular deployment, and then they will pick someone, or someone will volunteer for that deployment so that they don't have to pick someone. It's pretty common for people to volunteer for deployments in the military because it helps your evals and career progression.

5. The biggest thing you need to find out is how to get in the Navy and how soon you can get in. The Navy is very competitive right now and nurses are crawling over each other trying to get in. I talked to a recruiter today and he said they have pretty much filled their quotas all the way through fiscal year 2012. Everything else you could think of asking is pretty much out of your hands anyways (bonuses, duty stations, departments in hospitals, etc.). You could ask about ODS (officer bootcamp), but, again, it's out of you hand and you have to go to it regardless of what he says about it.

Best of luck! Navy is a great choice!

Hi:) i read your initial thread from 2004, and then read that you graduated successfully and became an RN:)!

So can you tell me how did you make it through the school? I am having same hardships as you did

Thank You!