PA and RN are totally different in their practice. Academically I’ve heard that PA is much more difficult. AECP is nice as you’re essentially a civilian for the time you’re going to school.

You just have to decide what it is you want to do as a medical professional. Do you want to act as a provider and primarily treat soldiers in FORSCOM or do you want to focus on patient care most likely in a MTF?

One thing to note is that as an RN you could move on to become a NP/CRNA, which would also have very different practices. NPs function more closely to a PA, but with more autonomy in the military. CRNAs are used to manage anesthesia, usually in a MTF as well.

Outside of the army your function as an RN wouldn’t change much. As a PA you would find a lot of lateral mobility as a provider, that being that you would be able to switch practice if you weren’t content with what you’re doing. NP civilians are very similar as well, but still carry some more autonomy with more nation wide ability to run their own practices.

Just decide what model you feel resonates more with you; the medical model or the nursing model, and that could help with your decision.

It depends what you want your future to look like. PAs generally speaking are doing primary care as a member of a FORSCOM unit. Nurses do much different work, mostly inpatient care.

It all depends on what your long term goal is (PA or NP). I’m also a 68C recently accepted into IPAP so I can’t really answer the questions from experience. I know this much though, promotion rate as an RN in the army is much faster than that of a PA. I decided on IPAP without even considering AECP because that’s what I want as a career. From experiences of others, I can say IPAP is much more challenging than AECP because you get a Bachelors and a Masters in about 2.4 years.