U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsmen spend months in "A" school undergoing training so that they can provide quality medical care to their fellow service members as well as their families. Now, thanks to advocation and efforts from staff members at Naval Medical Center Portsmouth, corpsmen have the opportunity to bridge the gap between training and medical practice with the Hospital Corpsman Residency Program (HMRP).
HMRP is a 10-week cohort program that aims to provide standardized training and integration into the medical field for new corpsman, blending administrative, on-boarding processes, hands-on clinical skills training and simulation, military readiness, and rotations across in-patient units.
In 2024, multiple nurses and corpsmen from various disciplines came together to design the course, which kicked off Dec. 8, 2025. Lt. j.g. Laura Forste, a registered nurse assigned to NMCP, was one of the nurses at the center of the design process.
“The conception was over the last 12 months [prior to the first course] with a lot of different people giving their input and organizing the concepts to mirror it to the nurse residency program,” said Forste. “This course will give corpsman a better baseline. A-school has given them the tools, now we are helping them put the ingredients together to bake the cake.”
Forste also notes that when corpsmen are not trained appropriately to handle the dynamic nature of the job, it affects both patient outcomes and retention rates. Forste hopes this standardized approach will build competence and confidence to bring about good patient outcomes and build resiliency among junior corpsmen.
“For years, corpsmen have relied on unit-specific orientations that varied widely in structure and depth,” said Lt. Hyekyong Chen, an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) nurse assigned to NMCP spearheading the program. “We wanted to create something standardized to ensure corpsmen are fully prepared to meet the complex demands of military healthcare while improving overall readiness and retention.” Chief Hospital Corpsman Jonni Gillispie, an HMRP facilitator, calls back to her time as a junior corpsman on an aircraft carrier, the largest class of warship the Navy has to offer, with upwards of 4,000 Sailors needing some degree of medical care, and how a program like this could have helped her.
“For my first duty station, I went to an aircraft carrier. I was expected to do my specialty of course, but I was also expected to be a general corpsman and help with things like sick call and medical emergencies,” said Gillispie. “Having something like this to hone my foundational knowledge would have absolutely been beneficial.”
The first group of participants graduated February 13, 2026, showing an increase in confidence across various clinical skills, according to an analysis performed by the facilitators of the cohort from a sample group of five corpsmen. “I am very grateful for the opportunity to be a part of this program and be a pioneer to see exactly how effective this program will be for future corpsman. I was able to learn so much so quickly due to all the wonderful nurses and corpsmen who were willing to teach me and show me their ways,” said Hospitalman Apprentice Baliam Toro-Vega, a participant in HMRP. “Once the program ended, I was a little nervous that I wouldn’t be ready. However, when I got my access to Genisis and Pyxis I was able to see just how much I retained from the program and how easy it was to transition from an orientee to being a stand-alone corpsman.”
Following the success of the first cohort class, the Nurse Residency Program aims to sustain the HMRP with oversight from enlisted leadership and plans to start its second cohort in April 2026.
NMRTC Portsmouth is the premier readiness and training platform that provides superior medical training for military medical service members at the U.S. military’s oldest, continuously operating military hospital, since 1830. NMCP, a nationally acclaimed state-of-the-art military treatment facility, along with the area's 10 branch health and TRICARE Prime Clinics and provides medical care for warfighters and their families. It also supports premier research and teaching programs designed to prepare new doctors, nurses and hospital corpsman for combat operations and public health crises.