Speaking of misinformation...
Congrats. Unfortunately ACLS is a complete waste of time and there's no evidence supporting its use. All this proves is that the ridiculous BS starts even earlier.
You forgot to mention GMO tours (that are not in the specialty of your choice).
The vast majority of military "teaching hospitals" are no where near as big as university hospitals and don't see anywhere are many sick patients.
Just wait, you'll see.
Your main job is to do whatever the military tells you which more often that not consists of administrative work and endless online training modules.
Patient care always comes second in the military.
Your medical proficiency is likely to be well below that of your civilian colleagues depending on your specialty and duty station.
Do some military physicians get lucky and have great experiences? Sure. The vast majority do not however.
Hey Alpinism,
Thanks for the response and bringing up several important points. Unfortunately, I think you are mistaken/misinformed on several things; I'll try to clarify things as best I can.
1) Uselessness of ACLS- I'm not going to argue the effectiveness/ importance of advance cardiac life support, except say that running codes (i.e when in t.v shows they yell clear, push epi, etc- this isn't really how it goes, but just to reference people as to what this is) are used by all hospitals. I don't know why you think this is useless. All I was implying is we get several extra training as medical students. We also have opportunities life doing FLS (fundamentals of laproscopic surgery), several simulators, several ultrasound labs, etc as early as our 1st yr.
2) GMO tours- for those that don't know, GMOs are General Medical Officers. First off, the Army basically doesn't do GMOs, same with the Air Force. It's the Navy with the GMOs (and even then, it's not all of them). GMOs are basically family docs who deploy on a ship/ base for about 2 yrs. Then they come back, and guess what- they get to do whatever specialty they want- like the other branches. Again, I'm not saying everyone get's their specialty, you have to be a good candidate, just like in civilian schools. You can't fail classes, do terribly on your boards and rotations and expect to do a "lifestyle" specialty. So yes, you get to do the specialty you want- for the Navy you might be delayed, but you'll get to do it.
3) Walter Reed National Naval Medical Center, San Antonio Medical Center, Madigan, Tripler, Naval Hospital at San Diego, Portsmouth, etc are all major hospitals. Then there's medium sized hospitals like Ft. Belvoir, Ft. Hood, Eisenhower, Ft. Bragg, Pensacola, Nellis etc. These are the type of teaching hospitals we get to rotate at. Few medical schools have the chance to rotate at such big hospitals and they're around the country! Sure you might have you're school's major hospital, if you're Harvard you'll have like 7 major hospitals, but in general it's tough to match this opportunity. If you look at USUHS as just one medical school, the amount of hospital affiliations it has is pretty impressive. On top of this it has partnerships with other universities as well (to work in their hospitals and vice versa).
4) "Your work, more often than not, consists of paper work etc." Again, I don't know where you get this. You will function as a doctor. It doesn't make sense for the US government to invest tons of money in you for you to be an administrator. You may be thinking of base/hospital commanders- but they're usually higher ranked and have practiced for some time. They're sort of like hospital administrators but that's a part of most (if not all) hospitals! You will be very busy practicing both in a deployed (you're the main medical person, how can you not be busy?) and non-deployed setting (again you're going to be a doctor in the field you practice in). Patient care is absolutely the number one goal of all military physicians. In fact that's one of the benefits of being a military doc, you don't have to mess with insurance, just treat. I'm sorry if you've had a bad experience, but this notion is just plain wrong.
5) Level of training. If you're into rankings, USUHS is pretty decently ranked. If you're into numbers, the board scores and pass rates of the residency programs are avg-above avg for the military. Some programs are, naturally, better than others. For example, Madigan's EM residency board scores are in the 95th percentile...of the country. Walter Reed's surgical residency is one of the largest in the nation. The training will be there. Can you go to a smaller hospital in a smaller town, yes absolutely- but again ALL medical schools will have their graduates disperse into different areas (some will practice in big hospitals, others will run clinics in their home town). To say that a military physician's skills are below that of their civilian colleagues is just wrong.
I'm not going to argue that some physicians have bad experiences, that all physicians are the best in the world, or that the military health system is a perfect one. That wasn't my intent in answering the original question. Somebody wanted to know about USUHS and I gave them as best (and brief) an answer as I could. I couldn't cover all the topics that military medicine entails, which is why I thank you for bringing up things like GMOs and hospital sizes.
Also I don't know where you got the notion that a "vast majority" of military physicians had a poor experience. Most of the docs I've interacted with, all with varying degrees of deployment/experiences/prestige (i.e from residents to former surgeon generals) really enjoyed their military career. It's not without it's challenges and downs, but that's shared by all doctors. A lot leave after their commitment, that's mostly because of family situations/better pay prospects. That said a lot also come back because they like the military structure better. Again, it's not for everyone, but to say that "the vast majority" have poor experiences is baseless and anecdotal. If your sources are simply stories here and there, consider that be careful as passing that as "a vast majority." The military health system is one of the largest health systems in the U.S and in the world.
I'm gonna quote/ echo what someone else said earlier: "being in the military is as much a calling as medicine is." If you come in because you want to serve, you're experience will probably be a lot better.
I hope this further clarified things!
Don't take this the wrong way, but it's called "serving your country, not your country serving you."
