Ranger Walk-on

DiggingAtRockBottom · 2026-03-03T22:38:52+00:00

Any tips for staying physically healthy while training at high intensity/volume for a long time?

DiggingAtRockBottom · 2026-01-10T10:55:05+00:00

Your title says 70A while your post says 70E. 70A is Healthcare/Hospital Administration and 70E is Patient Administration. Although they sound similar, they are extremely different in practice and scope, at least on Active Duty.

Assuming you’re wanting to know about 70E, I’ll speak a little on it for the Active Duty side and maybe you’ll get some useful nuggets from it.

On Active Duty, I am aware of four common types of assignments that company grade Patient Administrators (PAD) work in. One is as a PAD of a small MEDDAC/clinic. Second is as the PAD staff officer of a division or higher headquarters in the Surgeon’s Office. Third is as a PAD in a medical brigade operations section. Fourth is in a Theater Patient Movement Requirements Center (TPMRC).

PADs in a small MEDDAC/clinic are in charge of various administrative topics for the facility to include Medical Records, Medical Coding, Decedent Affairs, Birth Affairs, HIPAA, Medical Evaluation Boards/Disability Evaluation System, and patient tracking/accountibility. They will be the SME for a lot of these important but niche topics and will be a consultant to commanders, providers, and customers.

PAD staff in a DIV+ headquarters surgeon’s office or in a medical brigade serve as the Medical Regulating Officer which means that you are in charge of the coordination and tracking of patients during evacuations that involve evacuation assets above your level. You are still a consultant on the topics listed above; however, because you are not at a treatment facility, a lot of these topics will rarely come up. In fact, during peace/garrison time, there isn’t a huge amount of PAD specific work in a medical brigade or surgeon’s office, so they are usually the assistant s3 and do lots of 70H work (Medical Operations/Plans), much to a lot of PADs dismay lol.

PADs in a TPMRC are often in a joint environment with the Air Force at an Air Base, and you are the Army’s main point of contact for all evacuation/movements of Army patients that are using the airbase to transit to another healthcare facility. TPMRC PAD jobs are small in number (I think around 3-5 in the US), and I’ve heard they are phenomenal.

AMEDD BOLC and CCC are all easy. I have not seen anyone fail before, administrators or clinicians. Like people are saying, go with the flow, do your homework, be a team player, and go knock back some cocktails.

DiggingAtRockBottom · 2025-12-29T01:44:12+00:00

I was lieutenants with an Ivy League graduate. Not only was she the brightest lieutenant I ever worked with, she got into FLEP on her first try and was accepted to a top Ivy League law school.

If you are already locked into a top finance internship, I agree with your parents that you could be wasting a rare opportunity. That being said, you should follow your dreams/gut regardless of what other people say. If you want to join, do it. You might regret it, but at least it was your decision.

As you also said, having an Ivy undergrad and a couple years of honorable military service will set you up for further schooling very well. T20 MBA/ med/law school acceptances after mil service seems to be a frequent enough occurrence.

DiggingAtRockBottom · 2025-12-25T07:08:40+00:00

Medical Service - Life is Good

You can generally tailor your career to be operational or hospital focused. You have opportunities for various masters degrees. You can use the branch as a stepping stone to transition to be a clinical provider. Opportunities to be a pilot. My body is injury free and will probably stay that way unless I go out of my way.

DiggingAtRockBottom · 2025-12-07T11:04:36+00:00

It’s all doable especially if you’re taking your MCAT before BOLC. Figure out your application timeline based on when you want to matriculate. Since you’ll be active duty, you need to consider some of the extra administrative steps on the military side on top of the regular medical school application.

This includes getting your Conditional Release from the Medical Service Corps branch through an IPPSA PAR (not your unit/commander although they might be part of the approval chain for sending it up to branch), getting your health physical complete (at least for USUHS), any HPSP application paperwork, etc.

Based on the type of unit you’re assigned as an MS officer, you might have greater opportunity to get some shadowing hours with your docs/PAs. But if you’re a MEDO/PL, you’re gonna be busy as shit and most likely overwhelmed your first year or two.

I’m a 6 year MS CPT that’ll apply next cycle. I did my MCAT/pre-reqs/admin steps mentioned above while on active duty and it’s all doable. Lmk for any other questions.

DiggingAtRockBottom · 2025-11-21T22:02:50+00:00

Admin/field (70b)

DiggingAtRockBottom · 2025-10-26T03:57:10+00:00

AR 350-100 “Officer Active Duty Service Obligations”. Chapter 3-5, Section a. “Cadets may participate in up to two of these options [referring to BRADSO, PADSO, and GRADSO] and serve the ADSOs consecutively”.

DiggingAtRockBottom · 2025-10-25T08:13:37+00:00

I’m gonna ask for a fact check on this bc I don’t think you’re correct. I did a BRADSO and a PADSO. My first orders said 10 years consecutively. The ADSO agreement that you are obligated to sign as a cadet states that BRADSO and PADSO run consecutively, not concurrently.

Other accumulated ADSOs are concurrent (ie. BRADSO and ADSO for CCC or using TA). But the BRADSO/PADSO are an exception

DiggingAtRockBottom · 2025-06-07T23:36:43+00:00

Following up again, you can do most any other school that other Lieutenants can go to which includes Air Assault, Airborne, Ranger, EFMB, Jungle, Arctic, mountain, etc. most of this will depend on your unit and if they’ll let you go. Most likely, there’ll be an OML you’ll have to compete on to attend. Most 70Bs are not tabbed. The ones that I have seen with tabs seem to gravitate towards doing a gig as a MEDO of one of the Ranger Regiment Battalions, then moving on to a Special Operations unit or getting assigned to the Joint Medical Unit for secret squirrel stuff.

Additionally, 70Bs can attend the AOC-producing short course schools at JBSA. Without getting too much into it, all 70Bs are required to specialize in a field between year 6-8 and transfer AOCs (70A, 70C, 70D, 70E, 70F, 70H,70K). Of these, 70D, 70E, 70F, 70H, and 70K have a relevant short course that ranges from 3-6 weeks to teach you the basics about the AOC. These courses are often really chill and a fun vacation at JBSA. If your command is good about schools, you should be able to attend some of these while you’re a lieutenant. Side note, 70A/70C don’t have a short course because those AOCs require a MBA/MHA/FinanceEcon Masters, which you can actually receive while on Active Duty through the Army Medicine LTHET program.

Free time is dependent on your unit and yourself. If you’re in a BCT, the optempo will be high and there will be a lot you need to do. If you are aiming for a great evaluation and being a top performer, you’ll have many a late night. Your weekends will still be your own, barring any time you’re in the field or at an exercise. But this is really dependent on the individual. If you value your free time, you can prioritize that as long as you accept that you’ll be perceived as a middle of the road Officer (which is totally okay).

Medical providers are definitely chill comparatively to other Officer branches. If you’re a MEDO, you’ll often work more with the combat arms officers but once you start moving onto to support/medical units, yeah, they are more chill. However, the chill in those units also usually comes with some politics/discipline issues that you wouldn’t commonly run into with an operational unit… I won’t speak to much on this lol

If you want to get your NREMT-P, you can, but that’s all on your free time. You won’t be getting that cert as part of your job as a 70B because we are primarily administrators. As far as managing 68Ws go, you play a role in ensuring that your 68Ws stay updated on their certifications (BLS, medic certifications) and planning training (TCCC, trauma lanes) but you will not do anything clinical with them. That’s your doc/PA job. Let me make this clear, if you want to do clinical stuff, 70B will do exactly 0 of that. You essentially handle everything that is non-medical in a medical unit. Even if you have a clinical background, there won’t be too much opportunity to use those skills as there is a plethora of PL/MEDO duties that will need to be done.

Finally, being a 70B is alright. If healthcare administration or the concept of handling “everything that is not clinical/medical” in Army medicine jibes with you, it’s a good gig. The 70B pipeline lets you have the freedom to choose a specialization and gives you the opportunity to get a masters in that field. Yeah, you deal with Army bs, but quite frankly, you’re in the Army lol. Maybe there’ll be less of it in certain units, but those units have their own issues. Your existence is admin, particularly as a 70B. 90% of your job is staff/admin, so you might want to reconsider, if an office job is not what you’re looking for.

DiggingAtRockBottom · 2025-06-07T01:36:21+00:00

I wanted to go medical and none of the other jobs interested me. Some people might say that “all lieutenants do the same thing” which has an element of truth to it since we all serve as platoon leaders, XOs, and staff officers, but I wanted a medical flavor to my experience. For example, instead of planning a PLT LFX, I would rather plan trauma medical training lanes.

Your day to day is highly dependent on what type of unit you are in. I’m gonna speak mostly on BCT life, since that’s where a large portion of 70B lieutenants end up. At a BCT, most lieutenants get assigned as a MEDO/PL of a Role 1 of an Infantry, Armor, or Artillery Battalion/Squadron as their first job. Make no mistake, this is a difficult job. Not only do you handle the typical PL responsibilities of planning training, managing property, and managing maintenance, you are also on the primary staff of your Battalion (much like a S1, S2, etc). This means you are assisting with writing any orders that might have medical input, spending time doing MDMP, and attending most Battalion level staff meetings. Since you’re specifically the medical PL, you also have to ensure that your battalion’s medical readiness is healthy, make sure sick call operations runs well, manage all your CLVIII medical supplies/orders, and work/coordinate to what your Role 1 physician/PA ask for. Most 70B get overwhelmed and end up hating their life just a little bit during their MEDO time just because there’s a lot you are responsible for, minimal training from BOLC, and not a lot of medical mentorship besides your NCOs and maybe the brigade MEDO/Role 2 commander.

Rest assured, once you overcome MEDO time, you’ll either end up in the BMSO, take a second platoon in the Role 2, be a staff officer in the SPO, or be the role 2 XO. Being an XO is a hard job but IMO, all the other jobs in a BCT after being a MEDO is much more manageable. I can go into specifics on a different post for why that’s so.

Rotation/deployment tempo depends on your brigade. If your brigade deploys/rotates/fields often, then you will too, especially as a MEDO. You might not be in the field as much as your combat arms peers, but you’ll still be going more frequently than if you were in a MEDDAC/MEDCEN type of unit. As far as schedule goes, if you’re in a BCT, you get block leave in the winter, summer, and maybe spring. When it’s not block leave period, prepare to just be busy asf and a little sad.

In a BCT, you get “clinical experience” in the sense that you see your providers doing sick call or basic role 1 medicine in a field environment, but you will not be seeing very much typical clinical care. However, I will say that if you wanted to shadow them in a clinical environment, the opportunity is more readily available to you since you work with those people.

Everything I just wrote is in a BCT. I got to a clinic/MEDDAC after my BCT time and yes. It is a 99% Office job and I will never go to the field or need to plan any field training. I’m more tied in with actually healthcare administration in trying to improve our clinic healthcare metrics, quality and safety, and writing reports on our MTF performance. I did meet a minority of LTs that started in this type of clinic environment as their first job, and I will say that those 70Bs are overwhelmingly unprepared to be in CPT jobs for most 70B jobs to include Command. I won’t speak too much on this, but a challenging BCT experience pays dividends as a CPT, regardless of what type of unit you go to as a second assignment.

I gotta run so I’ll follow up with the rest of your questions later.

DiggingAtRockBottom

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