Standard Military Pay

• Nurses receive standard military base pay, which is calculated according to the nurse's time in the service and rank. Nurses go in as officers, so their rank can never be lower than ensign, O-1. Typically, they spend two years as ensign, two years as lieutenant, junior-grade and then several more as full lieutenant, O-3. After this, rank depends on performance evaluations. In the 2011 military pay charts, this sets a beginning Navy nurse's salary at a little over $33,000 per year. While this may seem a bit low by civilian standards, Navy nurses generally have their educations paid for by the U.S. government and don't have to carry malpractice insurance, eliminating two huge civilian-nursing expenses.
  
  

Special Military Pay

• Navy nurses are part of the Nursing Corps and entitled to special pay beyond regular salary. Nurses who did not have their nursing school paid for by the military are entitled to a $5,000 signing bonus. Nurses who are trained, board-certified nurse-anesthesiologists are eligible for an additional bonus of up to $6,000 per year if the military paid for nursing school and up to $15,000 per year if their nursing school was covered elsewhere. Nurses are not considered part of the Medical Corps, which also includes doctors and psychiatrists and are therefore not eligible for those bonuses.
  
  

Other Military Pay

• Military nurses are also eligible for other types of special pay, such as pay for learning certain foreign languages, drawing sea or submarine duty or imminent danger pay, as when deployed in a designated war zone. This pay is over and above base pay and bonuses. In addition, nurses deployed in designated war zones, even nurses who work on a hospital ship, may be exempt from paying income tax during the year in which they are deployed.
  
  

Military Benefits

• Navy nurses have access to a wide variety of military benefits, including free medical and dental insurance, free education while on active duty and access to commissary and other military services. Certain benefits may be in cash. For instance, Basic Allowance for Housing, or BAH, is paid in cash to all personnel who do not live in base housing; BAH is designed to compensate a military member for all housing and related expenses for herself and her family. Cost of living allowances are paid to personnel who live in certain high-expense areas like Alaska or Hawaii. These extra benefits add significantly to a Navy nurse's unofficial salary total.
  
  

Drawbacks

• While the overall compensation package may look good for a Navy nurse, there are a few drawbacks to the career not found in civilian nursing. Navy nurses are strictly salary and do not receive overtime or on-call pay no matter how much extra duty they pull. Additionally, the military calls all the shots; Navy nurses go where the military's needs dictate, whether that is the barren island of Diego Garcia in the South Pacific or a FOB triage tent in an Afghan war zone. Before comparing civilian salaries to Navy nurse salaries, these variables should be considered.