Medical and dental ratings combine - Goodbye DT rating

Since 08-29-05

From: Waspscpo@aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2005 3:20 PM
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: Medical, dental ratings combine - Goodbye DT rating !!!

http://www.navytimes.com/story.php?f=0-NAVYPAPER-1026791.php

Medical, dental ratings combine

New corpsmen have 2 years to sew on new patch

By Mark D. Faram
NavyTimes staff writer
August 22, 2005

The Navy’s largest enlisted rating is getting even bigger.  On July 25, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Mullen gave the final approval to merge the Navy’s 3,000 dental technicians into the hospital corpsman rating.  The combined active-duty corpsman rating will top out at more than 27,000 sailors, with another 4,700 in the Reserve.

The move combines all Navy enlisted medical expertise into one rating for the first time since the end of World War II.  It also comes just six months after the Navy announced plans to combine all medical and dental commands worldwide. “As the Navy becomes smaller — and with it, the medical community — this really makes more sense,” said Cmdr. Ken Laube, community manager for the medical ratings at the Navy Personnel Command.

“It will give more upward mobility to those in the dental technician community, especially in the senior enlisted ranks.” The merger is expected to take up to two years to complete, though most of the changes will happen over the next year. Beginning Oct. 1, all dental technicians will become corpsmen in title, though they’ll have some leeway in switching patches.

“Technically, [dental technicians] have up to two years to sew on their new rating patches, and that’s according to the uniform regulations,” said Master Chief Hospital Corpsman (SW/SCW) James Menke. “Of course, we hope everyone will get it done much sooner than that.”The merger will impact everyone in both career fields, including new training pipelines.

“We’re calling this ‘bridge’ training,” he said. “The overall goal is to turn dental technicians into corpsmen and give existing corpsmen a good grounding in the fundamentals of dental work.”Though no one will be required to return to the classroom, some studying will be required by all — and must be completed by July 30, 2006.

• Dental technicians will have two types of training to complete. First, they will have to download or order by mail the hospital corpsman rate training manuals available on the Navy Advancement Web site at https://www.courses.cnet.navy.mil/ . These are the same nonresident training courses that normally are required of sailors “striking” for the rating.

They also are used as study material for advancement exams. DTs will also be required to complete the Web-based version of the Corpsman “A” school available in the eLearning section of the Navy Knowledge Online Web site at www.nko.navy.mil . “The curriculum was designed initially for reservists who would complete it in five or six months of drill weekends,” Laube said. “We expect them to finish this over time ... and we figure that it encompasses anywhere from 10 to 12 days of work total, depending on a sailor’s ability to study.”

In addition, every new corpsman must demonstrate the ability to perform such tasks as starting intravenous lines and drawing blood before he will be allowed to fill a corpsman’s job.• The 28,200 corpsmen getting new dental technician skills must complete the two volumes of the dental technician rate training manual available for downloading or ordering through https://www.courses.cnet.navy.mil/.

Each corpsman will have 14 multiple-choice assignments to complete before the end of July next year, though many may want to complete their studies when preparing for advancement exams next spring. That’s because all advancement exams for both sets of sailors will be the new hospital corpsman test, which includes a dental section, beginning with the January chief’s exam.

That leaves this fall’s petty officer advancement cycle as the final time anyone will take a separate dental technician exam. In the meantime, schools will immediately begin to combine curricula. A pilot version of corpsman “A” school that teaches basic dental knowledge is now being tested. Students are expected to graduate in October, paving the way for the final class of Navy dental technicians to graduate from the joint dental school at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas, in December.

After that, corpsmen ordered into dental assistant billets will get an additional five or six weeks of dental training at Great Lakes, Ill., before being awarded a special Naval Enlisted Classification identifying them as qualified dental technicians. That course is currently under development.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Contributed,
YNCS Don Harribine, USN(ret)