Quote:
Originally Posted by a1qwerty55
Even if pay in the military were 150% the civilian sector and they blew flowers up your ass, plenty of people would leave to control their destiny, in other words not deploy, control where they live, what they wear and who they screw and what they do on their off time.
|
If the military paid 150% of what civilians get, there would be so many people signing up and renewing contracts that there would be no billets left for everyone. Even if they paid 100% of civilan salaries with reasonable deployment bonuses, etc, they would fully staff with board certified docs and not need to lure broke 21 year olds with $20K in cash upfront along with full tuition and a stipend, while, at least in the Navy, lying about their future GME prospects.
JAD - Thank you for taking an interest in military medicine, I really enjoy your surgery posts. As for the whole thing with sending Navy docs fresh out of intern year to the front line, lets be clear: For the people getting assigned now this was a total bait and switch. My telephone interview, when the paperwork was basically done, was the first time I even heard about this possibilty, and I was told it was 50/50 that I would do 1 year on a ship. Then the Navy told all of the medical core training at ODS in 2007 in person that they were going to be down to 200 of these positions by this year (from 600 orginially), and 100 next year, and we really wouldn't have to worry about it unless we were interested. Instead, they simply shifted many of the ship jobs (2 years deploying on a ship) to board certified docs, and left the marine jobs (2 years deploying to the sand pit) and the flight surgery and undersea medicine (3 years) to the graduating interns. Gen surg interns have a 87% chance of being forced to take one of these positions, and ortho, rads, ENT, anethesia, and EM have a 100% chance. JAD, you as much as anyone have to appreciate that it is difficult to make am informed decision when you are being outright LIED TO.
What the military should do is compensate docs appropriately, say at 100% of civilian pay with appropriate relocation and deployment bonuses, and I believe the vast majority of the problems would go away. They could get board certified physicians trained at high powered civilian institutions, and they could get out of the GME business. They would dealing honestly with people at a stage in their career where they could appropriately consider all of the variables before making a decision, and probably because of that people would be a lot happier. But could you ever see a line admiral signing off on $750k + bonuses for a spine surgeon, nevermind congress?