🩺 Medical & healthcare
Caring for service members in the field and in hospitals — from first responders under fire to lab, dental, and behavioral health.
What they do
Military medicine spans emergency care under fire and full hospital operations. Combat medics and Navy corpsmen provide first-response trauma care and routine sick call; specialists run labs, imaging, pharmacy, dental, operating rooms, and behavioral health.
You are trained fast and given real clinical responsibility early — often more hands-on patient contact than a civilian trainee gets.
Jobs & codes by branch
Representative jobs in this field and their military occupation codes — not a complete list; each branch has many more and codes change. Use the official job finders below for the full, current list.
Army
68W Combat Medic · 68A Biomedical Equipment · 68C Practical Nursing · 68D Operating Room · 68E Dental · 68G Patient Administration · 68H Optical Laboratory · 68J Medical Logistics · 68K Medical Laboratory · 68M Nutrition Care · 68P Radiology · 68Q Pharmacy · 68R Veterinary Food Inspection · 68S Preventive Medicine · 68T Animal Care · 68V Respiratory · 68W Health Care · 68X Behavioral Health · 68Y Eye Specialist
Navy
HM Hospital Corpsman — with specialty NECs for field medicine (FMF), surgical, laboratory, dental, radiology, pharmacy, behavioral health, preventive medicine, biomedical repair, and more
Air Force
4N0X1 Aerospace Medical Service · 4T0X1 Medical Laboratory · 4Y0X1 Dental · 4P0X1 Pharmacy · 4R0X1 Diagnostic Imaging · 4C0X1 Mental Health Service · 4H0X1 Cardiopulmonary Lab · 4J0X2 Physical Medicine · 4B0X1 Bioenvironmental Engineering · 4A1X1 Medical Materiel · 4A2X1 Biomedical Equipment · 4V0X1 Optometry · 4E0X1 Public Health
Marine Corps
Medical support is provided by Navy Hospital Corpsmen (HM) attached to Marine units.
Coast Guard
HS Health Services Technician
ASVAB areas that matter
General Science (GS) and Arithmetic Reasoning (AR) weigh most, plus the verbal subtests — Word Knowledge (WK) and Paragraph Comprehension (PC). Your AFQT score decides whether you can enlist; individual subtests combine into “line scores” that set which jobs you qualify for. Prepare with our free ASVAB practice tests.
How it transfers to civilian work
Medics and corpsmen transition to EMT and paramedic roles, and many states and bridge programs give credit toward LPN/RN. Specialists move into their civilian equivalents — medical lab, radiologic, pharmacy, and dental technicians, and behavioral-health/counseling support — across the healthcare industry. Credentials: NREMT (EMT/Paramedic), CNA, phlebotomy, plus VA/state medic-to-civilian credentialing programs.
See every job & the exact requirements
Codes, availability, and ASVAB minimums vary by branch and change often — confirm on each branch's official job finder: Army ↗ · Navy ↗ · Air Force ↗ · Marine Corps ↗ · Space Force ↗ · Coast Guard ↗.