US Army Graduate Program in Anesthesia Nursing (USAGPAN) FY2025

Nursing Students SRNA

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Was wondering who all was applying to USAGPAN FY2025? 

Hello everyone! 

I am applying this year for FY25 as a civilian nurse and very excited but wanted to ask you guys for advice! 

A little bit of my background includes: 

Prior service as 68C (LPN) in the Army Reserves for 6 years, 2 years of CVICU experience, GPA 3.85/BSN GPA 3.96, CCRN, 40 shadow hours, and taking a biochem class right now.  

I know GRE is now optional and I thought it was more for people who had a lower GPA during their undergrad and to make up for that... I might be wrong. Any who,  I feel like my GPA is decent, but should I still take the GRE? Will it still make me more competitive? Thanks yall! 

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Jujubeeb said:

Hello everyone! 

I am applying this year for FY25 as a civilian nurse and very excited but wanted to ask you guys for advice! 

A little bit of my background includes: 

Prior service as 68C (LPN) in the Army Reserves for 6 years, 2 years of CVICU experience, GPA 3.85/BSN GPA 3.96, CCRN, 40 shadow hours, and taking a biochem class right now.  

I know GRE is now optional and I thought it was more for people who had a lower GPA during their undergrad and to make up for that... I might be wrong. Any who,  I feel like my GPA is decent, but should I still take the GRE? Will it still make me more competitive? Thanks yall! 

I don't think anyone here could answer that for you. It looks like you have a strong application but you have to weigh those options yourself. You have everything else…… 

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I am applying and wondering any advice for the shadowing and interview in San Antonio ?

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Jujubeeb said:

Hello everyone! 

I am applying this year for FY25 as a civilian nurse and very excited but wanted to ask you guys for advice! 

A little bit of my background includes: 

Prior service as 68C (LPN) in the Army Reserves for 6 years, 2 years of CVICU experience, GPA 3.85/BSN GPA 3.96, CCRN, 40 shadow hours, and taking a biochem class right now.  

I know GRE is now optional and I thought it was more for people who had a lower GPA during their undergrad and to make up for that... I might be wrong. Any who,  I feel like my GPA is decent, but should I still take the GRE? Will it still make me more competitive? Thanks yall! 

I think you are a pretty strong candidate. Have you done biochemistry? How about your science GPA?

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Seprina l said:

I am applying and wondering any advice for the shadowing and interview in San Antonio ?

Typically you shadow an SRNA and their staff for 2.5 days and on the third day you do your interview. Sometimes they give you something to read at your hotel (or wherever) and ask you questions about it. Sometimes they just ask you about a difficult patient you had and get into the medicine if it. It's very variable. 

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MikeyD said:

Typically you shadow an SRNA and their staff for 2.5 days and on the third day you do your interview. Sometimes they give you something to read at your hotel (or wherever) and ask you questions about it. Sometimes they just ask you about a difficult patient you had and get into the medicine if it. It's very variable. 

At what point do they schedule the shadowing?

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MikeyD said:

Typically you shadow an SRNA and their staff for 2.5 days and on the third day you do your interview. Sometimes they give you something to read at your hotel (or wherever) and ask you questions about it. Sometimes they just ask you about a difficult patient you had and get into the medicine if it. It's very variable. 

Thank you, this is very helpful!

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Specializes in ICU.
Christian Johnstone said:

At what point do they schedule the shadowing?

As you get more of your application materials in you can contact Jana Johns the USAGPAN application coordinator about setting up a shadow/interview 

 

I started submitting stuff for my application 1st week of February last year and inquired about a shadow time as well

 

I ended up going early May and I went to William Beaumont Army Medical Center in El Paso for three days, loved the experience and I hope to go there for phase 2

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32SoulPatrolRN said:

As you get more of your application materials in you can contact Jana Johns the USAGPAN application coordinator about setting up a shadow/interview 

 

I started submitting stuff for my application 1st week of February last year and inquired about a shadow time as well

 

I ended up going early May and I went to William Beaumont Army Medical Center in El Paso for three days, loved the experience and I hope to go there for phase 2

Hi, regarding the interview, are we expected to know the cellular level of the medications? Congrats for you being accepted to the program!

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Specializes in ICU.
Seprina l said:

Hi, regarding the interview, are we expected to know the cellular level of the medications? Congrats for you being accepted to the program!

Everyone's interview will be different so I can only speak from my own experience and I would say like 95 percent is emotional/personal questions - however I prepared for a 50/50 in case I had clinical questions

as far as medications I really tried to focus on mechanism of action and receptor sites

They want to see your motivation on your reason for being a CRNA and serving as an Army Officer which should be as important as wanting to be a CRNA

they want to see that you have though about not only the sacrifice of having to go through the hardships of CRNA school but also potentially uprooting your whole life to join the army

I moved halfway across the country with my wife and four kids 

they want to see that you understand the critical importance of Army CRNAs deploying independently and the high probability that you may deploy not too long after you graduate given the state of the world

the student I shadowed said a student in the class above him had a first deployment to Syria on a humanitarian mission when it was getting bombed and unfortunately had to take care of a lot of civilian trauma including a large amount of women and children - they want to see you have the emotional fortitude to potentially have to do something like that and by yourself or with very little assistance on the anesthesia side

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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32SoulPatrolRN said:

Everyone's interview will be different so I can only speak from my own experience and I would say like 95 percent is emotional/personal questions - however I prepared for a 50/50 in case I had clinical questions

as far as medications I really tried to focus on mechanism of action and receptor sites

They want to see your motivation on your reason for being a CRNA and serving as an Army Officer which should be as important as wanting to be a CRNA

they want to see that you have though about not only the sacrifice of having to go through the hardships of CRNA school but also potentially uprooting your whole life to join the army

I moved halfway across the country with my wife and four kids 

they want to see that you understand the critical importance of Army CRNAs deploying independently and the high probability that you may deploy not too long after you graduate given the state of the world

the student I shadowed said a student in the class above him had a first deployment to Syria on a humanitarian mission when it was getting bombed and unfortunately had to take care of a lot of civilian trauma including a large amount of women and children - they want to see you have the emotional fortitude to potentially have to do something like that and by yourself or with very little assistance on the anesthesia side

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you so much for your detailed reply! I am emotional ready for the deployment and will also prepare for emotional questions and clinical questions.

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Specializes in ICU.

No worries and happy to help! Now I will say when you're in the OR shadowing you may get asked clinical questions, 

the clinical site director at my site happened to be precepting my student and asked me about waveforms on the ventilator, difference between volume control and pressure control ventilation and how those waveforms look differently on the ventilator and why and why there is a normal gap on the ventilator ETCO2 and serum blood gas CO2

I also was asked to convert medication rates from mg/hr to mcg/kg/min with only pen and paper and no calculator - my ICU experience is all PICU and almost everything in Peds is weight based mcg/kg/min, mcg/kg/hr or mg/kg/hr so it wasn't too much of an issue 

they made the numbers work nice too in multiples of 10 and easy to divide numbers- when I was preparing to interview I came across some people saying to prepare how to multiply and divide decimals without a calculator - so I just did a quick Google search and after some practice it wasn't too bad 

The ventilator questions were in the OR and not the official interview but the math question was during my official interview 

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