Health Professions Scholarship Program

From Student Doctor Network Wiki

What to Expect from the HPSP Program

For the background check, you will have to list everywhere you have ever lived, give names and contact information of people that knew you there, list all of your past employers, and give details about your relatives—not such an easy task if you moved around a bit when you were a child.

If accepted to the program, you will spend the summer before starting medical school at Officer Training School’s Commissioned Officer Training (also known as COT).5 This 4–6 week program involves getting into shape—you will do lots of running—learning the ins and outs of the military, and getting commissioned into the reserves as an O-1 (the lowest officer rank). You will receive active duty pay while training and then go on reservist salary with no benefits while in medical school. Currently, HPSP recipients receive about $560 every two weeks.

During the summer between your first and second year, you will then shadow a military physician to see what life is like inside the service—provided that you do not have COT. During the fourth year, you will enter a residency match program much like its civilian equivalent—the only differences being that you will learn on a military base and receive your match results a month before your civilian classmates do. You can petition to take a civilian residency and fellowship instead of rotating through a military hospital. You will not incur any extra active duty payback if you take the civilian option. The downside is that you will not receive the benefits of being the military (see below).

While the military is pretty open to letting you practice almost any specialty that you want, you must realize that the needs of the military come first (e.g., if there are no spots available for plastic surgery, you might end up as a general practitioner). Further, the Navy will sometimes defer sending its doctors to residency until after they have first completed a tour of duty as a General Medical Officer (GMO)—basically a general practitioner.

As a resident, you will be promoted to an O-3 (a captain in the Army and Air Force, a lieutenant in the Navy) and receive full benefits plus an active duty salary—currently around $60,000.6 The time spent in a military residency can be counted towards rank advancement and retirement. At no point during medical school will you be pulled out of the reserves and sent to war. Recall that financing a medical education is very expensive. The last thing that the government wants is to yank you out of school and then have to worry about getting you back in, thereby having to pay double during the whole process.

If you want to see the details of the contract that you will have to sign, do a Google search for “AFITI 36-101.” In this publication you will find all of the rules and procedures that you must follow as an HPSP student. If you want further information about the military, read one of the following books that is conducive to your preferred branch of service: Air Force Officer’s Guide7 , Army Officer’s Guide8 , or The Naval Officer’s Guide9 . The Stackpole Books publishing firm10 has lots of material on the military, if you are interested in further reading.