Also replying to homunculus
I feel that military medicine is such a unique opportunity to do what civilian physicians can not do. If I wanted to work in a normal hospital and treat civilian patients, I would rather go the civilian route (which I feel is superior for that).
However I want to do something atypical, aka have an adventure.
Maybe ten years from now I'll lose this want of "adventure" but really that's my aspiration in wanting to put a "soldier" in front of "doctor". And I believe my wants are not solely limited to the medical field. This is why I want to build myself up to be experienced in all sorts of stuff.
I was talking with the doctor I'm shadowing currently and he was talking about the increasing specialization even within specialties. For example some doctors in his cardiac-thoracic surgery department only do aortic arch repairs without touching any valve replacements etc. I really do not like the direction that medicine is currently heading towards. I'm hoping that the military experience will really make me an all around crazy doctor.
This idea you have is a movie or a moderately priced paperback book, not real life. I'm not trying to be a dick, but if you sign a military contract thinking this is what you're going to get you are going to be a very unhappy person. Ultimately, the thread here is built for advice - and bitching, don't forget bitching - but also advice, and the advice here is that you re-evaluate your plan and read more of the threads here.
Most deployed surgeons spend most of their time sitting on their backsides waiting for something to happen. Triage and trauma does happen, but it is not what fills most of your time. When you're not deployed, I promise you that your life is no more exciting (and likely less so) than most civilians. I'm bored as hell right now, which is why I'm always on this GD thread. While there are larger military medical facilities out there, most of the places you will end up (statistically) are small community hospitals where nothing exciting happens.
If you want to be a soldier first, as mentioned, do that. Then be a doctor. Being a doctor who is a soldier first is impractical at best and possibly unethical. You don't have to agree with that statement for it to be true to most of your colleagues with whom you must interact. All that being said, if you want to go into operational medicine, you get to be a soldier who can make people call him "Dr.," but who in most cases doesn't actually do any doctoring.
The idea that you absolutely must sub-sub-subspecialize is also untrue. If you feel that you must live in NYC and while there you must do surgery "X", then yes it helps to do nothing but surgery "X" and to be very well known for doing it. This is, in most cases, a marketing gimmick rather than a result of patient outcomes (with certain exceptions). Outside of scenarios like that, you have no obligation to narrow your scope of practice that much (whithin reason).
