Stripes and Stethoscopes: A Comparative Analysis of Nurse Corps Promotion Rates Across Army, Navy, and Air Force

Abstract

This thesis provides the first systematic cross-service comparison of promotion outcomes among U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force Nurse Corps officers. Although the Defense Officer Personnel Management Act (DOPMA) establishes a common statutory framework for advancement, each service retains discretion over promotion timing and vacancy management, potentially producing divergent career trajectories for similarly qualified nurses. Using longitudinal administrative data from the Defense Medical Human Resources System Intranet (DMHRSi) spanning fiscal years 2016–2024, I analyze promotion rates, time-in-grade, and promotion likelihood at the O-3 to O-4, O-4 to O-5, and O-5 to O-6 gates using cohort-based descriptive analysis, logistic regression, Kaplan–Meier survival estimation, and Cox proportional hazards models. I found that promotion timing differs across services at each gate: the Air Force leads at O-3 to O-4, while the Navy leads at both O-4 to O-5 and O-5 to O-6. Service differences narrow at senior ranks. Medical-Surgical nurses have the lowest promotion rates across all services, yet subspecialty differences alone do not explain service-wide disparities, suggesting institutional policy drives promotion timing more than workforce composition. Findings inform workforce planning and equity discussions in joint medical environments