I have gone through two phases of considering and dismissing the idea of the military. I love the idea of helping soldiers, and I come from a military family, but I have very specific career goals. I would like to practice and research integrative modalities (yoga, meditation, sound therapy) along with internal medicine or family medicine. I talked to a recruiter this week and she recommended the pain management and rehabilitation residency, but I realize I would not be able to be an internist as well and would have limited options when becoming a privately practicing physician. If I was to do civilian residency my dream would be to do a combined preventative medicine and internal medicine program. Is there any program like this in the military? Also, would I be required to do only military rotations in my third and fourth year rotations? I think that the type of research I would like to do would have the potential to help soldiers in many ways, but I also realize it may be too far fetched for the military. Thank you.
Accepted to Medical School and I Have Some Questions Before Completely Ruling Out The Military
- Thread starter dreday710
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The Navy has recently begun 4 year family medicine programs that allow a 1 year of focus on a topic of the student's preference. There is currently one student that I know of that has chosen an integrative medicine focus that includes a greater emphasis on OMM and acupuncture as well as other topics. This is a pilot program that will be going into its third year coming up, so I do not know if it will continue by your time.
Unless you are at USU there is no requirement to do military only rotations. If you do HPSP, each year you are required to do 45 days of active duty which students typically use for audition rotations during fourth year. The 45 days are required each fiscal year which begins on October 1, so people tend to do a rotation before October 1 during fourth year, and then after October 1 in fourth year. Some hospitals allow students to do extra rotations as non active duty if the student wants to.
Unless you are at USU there is no requirement to do military only rotations. If you do HPSP, each year you are required to do 45 days of active duty which students typically use for audition rotations during fourth year. The 45 days are required each fiscal year which begins on October 1, so people tend to do a rotation before October 1 during fourth year, and then after October 1 in fourth year. Some hospitals allow students to do extra rotations as non active duty if the student wants to.
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If you have a very specific career/research goal you are almost always better off not joining the military. If you want to take care of soldiers, then graduate med school, finish your residency/research, and get hired as a contractor. As usual, ignore what recruiters say when it comes to medicine. PM&R is a field that your can certainly practice privately.
In general, I agree that the more specific the career goals, the more you should lean away from military medicine.
However, there does seem to be a fairly strong push towards preventative medicine, at least in the Army under SG Horoho (Performance Triad, Comprehensive Soldier Family fitness, army wellness centers...). The capabilities of the Army Wellness Centers in particular are quite impressive in my opinion. Most civilians would pay thousands of dollars for those services, even with insurance. Do they actually help? I have no idea. Lots of criticisms could be made at this approach, but at least right now there seems to be a lot of opportunities in those areas.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22742678
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21907150
http://www.army.mil/article/34359/
http://phc.amedd.army.mil/organization/institute/dhpw/pages/armywellnesscentersoperation.aspx
http://csf2.army.mil/about.html
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If everyone would just eat lettuce, run 5 miles a day and sleep 8 hours, all disease would go away and there would be no need for specialists, right? So thinks a nurse.
I appreciate the feedback so far. Would anyone be able to tell me more about the pain management specialty and what the job is, its limits, etc? Also, I am more interested in conducting clinical research on these integrative modalities, than relying on them without evidence, so let's not get into a debate about whether they are useful or not. I really would like to look at psychological pain as well as emotional pain, and I think I would not be able to do that with a PM&R specialty, correct?
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Unlikely to do PM&R in the .mil. Get a VA job.
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There is almost NO CHANCE that you'll get do this as an active duty physician. I would say ZERO chance, but somebody will say, "I knew a guy once that kid of did that. He was my brother's roommates, cousin from boot camp."
If you want to do research in these areas - then don't join the military.
Multiple people have told you that now.
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