A question on medic ranks for anyone with military experience

[manyeyedhydra]

I have a character that's working as a field medic/doctor in the US military. I have the first line as:

<MedicRank> Tim Rubin looked . . .

What would be an appropriate replacement for <MedicRank>? Is it just "Doctor" or is there a more official title/rank? (A medic equivalent of Private First Class, Sergeant, etc)

Level of experience of the character is about junior doctor.

thanks.
M.E.

 

[mynameisben]

I have a character that's working as a field medic/doctor in the US military. I have the first line as:

<MedicRank> Tim Rubin looked . . .

What would be an appropriate replacement for <MedicRank>? Is it just "Doctor" or is there a more official title/rank? (A medic equivalent of Private First Class, Sergeant, etc)

Level of experience of the character is about junior doctor.

thanks.
M.E.

If he's an officer, then (in order of increasing rank) Lieutenant, Captain, Major.
If he's enlisted, then Hospital Corpsman is a good choice.
If he's a woman, then modify my choice of pronoun accordingly.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Usually its like, Captain Newman, M.D. if its army or air force. The Marines use Navy MDs.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

If he's an officer, then (in order of increasing rank) Lieutenant, Captain, Major.
If he's enlisted, then Hospital Corpsman is a good choice.
If he's a woman, then modify my choice of pronoun accordingly.

Military MDs start at O-3 grade, thats Captain (Army) or Lieutenant (Navy).

 

[Tyro999]

Doctors are always commissioned officers, and usually are comissioned as Captain [US Army/USMC/USAF] or Lieutenant [US Navy/US Coast Guard].

"Field Medics" [Army/USAF] and "Corpsmen" [USN/USMC*/USCG, derived from Medical Corps to which all Doctors, Nurses, Corpsmen belong, and yes, nowadays there are Corpswomen, but I've never heard that term used] are enlisted personnel holding ranks/rank titles of their specific service. Officer and Enlisted rank charts can be found at the various services' web sites.

* Note: All USMC medical and dentistry are provided by USN Doctors/Dentists/and Corpsmen assigned to duty with the USMC after special training for such duty.

 

[JustaSCOUNDREL]

Since I'm retired Navy I can't speak for the army or U.S. A.F. but in the Navy Doctors are a very valuable commodity. When I served in a destroyer squadron (8 ships) we had one Doctor assigned. Assume 350 men per ship so there was a single Doctor for 2400 men. Each ship did have a senior corpsman with special training. I doubt very much you'll find very many if any Doctors out on a normal field operation. They are much more valuable in a hospital somewhere.

All medics are always called Doc or medic in an emergency. I think you could write your sentence like this and be just fine.


Tim (Doc) Rubin, the squads medic (or platoons senior medic), looked . . . You can continue to refer to him as Doc for any conversations with the military. When with a young lady he is of course Tim.

Any Army guys please feel free to correct me if I am wrong about anything.

Mike

 

[loquere]

I have a character that's working as a field medic/doctor in the US military. I have the first line as:

<MedicRank> Tim Rubin looked . . .

What would be an appropriate replacement for <MedicRank>? Is it just "Doctor" or is there a more official title/rank? (A medic equivalent of Private First Class, Sergeant, etc)

Level of experience of the character is about junior doctor.

thanks.
M.E.

I'm fairly certain for good reason that they start out as Army captains!

 

[Boxlicker101]

When I was in the Air Force, many decades ago, the proper form of address for a medical officer was "Doctor" regardless of his or her rank. They were commissioned as captains when they entered the service. This was usually the result of Uncle Sam paying their way through medical school, and most of them served one hitch and left. There were many exceptions, but the majority were just there for four years.

 

[bashfullyshameless]

Much of this comes down to which service he's in, and whether he's a "doctor" or a "medic," as these are very different things in terms of rank.

Enlisted/Officer: The long and short of it is, did he go to college before joining up, and does he hold a leadership/management position? If he just joined out of high school and/or with some college, he'd be enlisted. They never get called "sir" and they're the people who actually make the military run. If he went to college (or one of the academies) and wants to be a "sir," then he's an officer, and he gets paid better, gets better housing & other accommodations, and is often not nearly as important as he wants to believe himself to be.

Enlisted ranks are on a scale of 1-9 (there's a 10 for each service, but only one for each), and officer ranks are also on a 1-10 scale., An officer at 1 (ensign or 2nd lieutenant) formally outranks an E-9... but would be an idiot to get into a pissing contest with said E-9. Pop culture film, tv and such tend to love officers for some reason, but in reality the military is largely run by enlisteds and there are shit-tons of enlisted folks who do their jobs just fine without talking to officers for weeks at a time.

Enlisted medics can have a ton of responsibility. Often you don't have a real doctor seeing to the needs of a station; you just have an enlisted medic or two... and if there's an emergency and they just gotta do it, they'll glove up and do what they gotta to save someone's life, even if it's a procedure that should be done by a "real doctor" (though again, we're talking life and death emergencies here).

As noted earlier, if he's Navy, Coast Guard or (assigned to) Marines, he'll be a Corpsman, or more formally Hospital Corpsman. He will therefore be a Petty Officer (3rd, 2nd or 1st Class), or a Chief, Senior Chief or Master Chief. Nobody gets addressed as "Petty Officer 2nd Class Jones." They'd just call him "Petty Officer Jones." But if it's a discussion about Jones in the 3rd person and he's not known to the speakers personally, they might throw in the 2nd class thing just to be clear.

Important note: The Marines don't actually grow their own medics. They borrow Corpsmen from the Navy. The most highly-decorated job field in the US military is the Navy Corpsman. Marines will (stereotypically; there are plenty of exceptions) flip a lot of shit to members of other services, but they largely treat Navy Corpsmen as their own.

Generally, you address someone by their rank to their face regardless of service (but again, "Corpsman" works just fine for the nautical services). You refer to someone in 3rd person by their rank or by their rate in the Navy/CG, but still by rank for the others. I was either "ET3 Bashfullyshameless" or "Petty Officer Bashfullyshameless" while I was in the Coast Guard. If I'd been Army, though, I'd just have been Corporal and that'd have been it.

Most importantly, everyone (other than a fellow medical type) will address a medic/corpsman as "Doc"... unless people really, really don't like him and don't think much of his skills.

 

[bashfullyshameless]

As an aside: I've used medics (both Army and Navy) as characters in stories before, and have therefore done an unreasonable amount of research on this. Hit me up if you have other questions. There are all sorts of considerations, though they can be worked out fairly quickly. It's not hard to Google around a bit to figure out a reasonable career path for a military specialty.

I don't pretend to have first-hand knowledge (I was an electronics tech), but I can certainly help you work out the vagaries of placing a fictional character into proper career context.

 

[manyeyedhydra]

Thanks for the answers. I can see it's a little more complex than I first thought.

What I probably should have made clearer is it's a 3rd person PoV introduction. How the world would describe them (so official rank, I guess).

If it was an infantrymen I would have started the sentence:

Private Joe Bloggs looked... or Sergeant Joe Bloggs looked....

Corpsman seems to be the popular answer, but I'd prefer something like Field Medic if it's a valid descriptor, as it would be easier to work out what they were for poor laymen like myself

 

[topace]

I read somewhere that Star Trek ranks are based upon the US Military, and they always called the doctor in shows by rank (and occasionally the friendly "Doc") - then again most of the Doctors in the show were the CMO's of the ships and part of the Executive Staff.

 

[sr71plt]

I read somewhere that Star Trek ranks are based upon the US Military, and they always called the doctor in shows by rank (and occasionally the friendly "Doc") - then again most of the Doctors in the show were the CMO's of the ships and part of the Executive Staff.

Other military officers/enlisted are supposed to refer to them by rank (and the military doctor ranks for the Army and Air Force go up through major and colonel--even a smattering of generals. If you came in with your medical degree, you wouldn't be ranked anything lower than a captain--and not for long at that rank). If they are working in a hospital serving military dependents, the dependents can call them doctor.

 

[Weird Harold]

What I probably should have made clearer is it's a 3rd person PoV introduction. How the world would describe them (so official rank, I guess).

If it was an infantrymen I would have started the sentence:

Private Joe Bloggs looked... or Sergeant Joe Bloggs looked....

...

A lot is going to depend on nationality and branch of service. But for a US Regular Army Infantry...

Spc4 Joe (Doc) Bloggs, the Company's (platoon's) field medic, looked....

Spc4==Specialist Four: An enlisted grade equal in pay to a Sergeant (E-4) but not in the chain of command. Field Medics would generally be Spc4 or Spc5 rather than Sergeant (E4) or Staff Sergeant (E5)

The US Air Force doesn't use field medics except for specialized units -- such as Air Sea Rescue. While para-jumpers/rescue swimmers are qualified EMTs, they are referred to by their rank and aren't generally considered "medics" or called "Doc."

"Corpsman" would be reserved for US Marines -- "Corpsman Joe Bloggs"

Modes of address and ranks would be completely different for non-US military.