Quick Question

[pineapplehead]

Sorry if this has already been asked a million times, but I don't have internet access at home and can't access this forum very often.
Okay, I am a pre med student and recently an Army rep came to our university to try and recruit us to sign up with him. The HPSP program that he was talking about sounded really interesting, and since I am a Navy brat, I am considering it. However, my husband is in the Air Force and has a bias towards that branch. He says the Air Force is a lot more family oriented, whereas in the Army and the Navy, physicians get deployed all the time. Is this true? Any Air Force Med students out there want to comment? Basically I'm just trying to see who likes their work environment the most and for what reason. Is one branch more 'fun' to work in than the other? Or is it all pretty much the same? Oh, also, does anybody know how many females apply and are accepted to the program annually? And what's the deal with bootcamp - I've heard they go easy on physicians?
Thanks!

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[GMO_52]

Second question first...it ain't bootcamp. More like summer camp minus the adult supervision (that's true across all services).

Whether you'll deploy a lot as a doc depends more on your specialty than branch of service. Most Navy docs do a GMO tour, which is good and bad. On the one hand, because it shares the burden around, there are fewer deployments for post-residency physicians. On the other hand, if you are in a specialty that rarely deploys, GMO tours ensure at least one deployment. Now...as for the differences between the services, Army and Air Force primary care physicians (FP, IM, Ped, etc) fill the billets that used to be GMO billets. As a result, they deploy quite frequently. There are no hard and fast rules to this. I would not take a scholarship to any branch with the idea that you are going to avoid this aspect of military medicine.

 

[tman]

Originally posted by GMO_52
Whether you'll deploy a lot as a doc depends more on your specialty than branch of service...I would not take a scholarship to any branch with the idea that you are going to avoid this aspect of military medicine.

AMEN to that, I'm not sure what your husband does but I can tell you that the Air Force deploys it's docs as much as the other services. One thing the AF does that may be a little different than the Navy and possibly the Army is that instead of doing 6 month deployments the AF tends to rotate their docs in 3 month cycles if the manning will support it. The end result is that you deploy more frequently but for a shorter period per deployment. In the end it probably pretty much evens out. In the AF our surgeons, IM, FP, ER, Flt med, and psych docs bear the brunt of the deployments, but most of the other specialties deploy as well, especially with the ops tempo as it is now and will be for the forseeable future. People chose different services for different reasons. You'll just have to do some research and see what you are most attracted to...different strokes for different folks. One HUGE factor for you may be the fact that your husband is in the AF already. If you plan on being stationed with him it is without a doubt in your best interest to join the AF, even then Joint Spouse assignments are not always a given but a heck of a lot easier to come by than cross service joint spouse assignments. As far as quality of life issues, I am biased towards the Air Force since I've been in since 1989. When I came in there was still a big disparity between the services when it came to things like housing and family services on bases. Since the "Quality of Life" initiatives came about in the mid '90s the gap has closed considerably and the other services began to adopt the AF philosophy about taking care of thier people in light of recruiting and retention problems all the services were facing. As a third year student at USUHS I work with docs from all the services daily and have yet to hear any of them say "I wish I would have joined X service because they have it so much better". Granted, we DO have the best golf courses, but who's got time for golf these days??? Who knows what the future holds, by the time you are finished with undergrad, med school and residency the world will be a different place. Hopefully things will cool down over the next few years and we won't have to be doing the things that it's the military's job to do but if not we'll all be there regardless of what color uniform you happen to wear, after all...that's what we get paid the big bucks for . Good luck in your future endevors..