One Weekend off a Month (Or Every Two) in EM Residency?

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studocplsignore

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I'm sorry if this is the wrong place to post this, but I didn't think the medical student forum would have more information. I'm currently applying to the National Guard and one of the obligations is drilling one weekend every two months. I'm wondering if this is possible to do during residency and if residency directors would balk at one of the students having to do something like this. Thank you!

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I'm sorry if this is the wrong place to post this, but I didn't think the medical student forum would have more information. I'm currently applying to the National Guard and one of the obligations is drilling one weekend every two months. I'm wondering if this is possible to do during residency and if residency directors would balk at one of the students having to do something like this. Thank you!
It's possible. No one would baulk.
 
Dude, residency is HARD. Giving up a golden weekend would be miserable....and that's coming form someone who is at a program with relatively fewer hours. Also, it would be near impossible to get a weekend off on a lot of off-service months.
 
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This request would not have been granted in my residency. They own you.
 
If you are already in the guard, the residency is obligated to give you the time off.
But you need to disclose that information to the residency during the interview process and may affect their rank order. Some programs will care, some will not.

If you're already in residency you can't sign a contract to join the guard without your program's approval. If you do sign the contract without program approval, expect your residency contract to not get renewed for the following year.
 
It wouldn't be a problem at my program and they'd make sure if you needed it off on your off-service months that you'd get it. Then again I want to echo the above sentiments that it would be exhausting to give up your only weekend of the month off to go do drills.
 
Don't national guard people get like, deployed to go places. That could throw a kink in your residency as well...
 
Don't national guard people get like, deployed to go places. That could throw a kink in your residency as well...

national guardsmen in for physician slots are non-deployable by law during school and residency
 
This request would not have been granted in my residency. They own you.

that would be a violation of federal law, what's more common is the discrimination in hiring/ranking because they know once they take you, they have to let you drill and can't stop you
 
This would not be a problem in my residency either, in fact, one of my classmates proudly serves in the Guard and hasn't had any issues. Admittedly, as mentioned above, he sacrifices a weekend to do this.
 
Couple of things:

1. Legally, time to go to drill is protected by law. That being said, you would be a fool to not play nice with your program. They can hurt you badly and you would never be able to prove anything. Beyond that, you're just hurting other people in the Guard if you come through being a pain in the ass.

2. The flip side is that you are legally obligated to be at drill unless excused by your commander. They have full power to send the police to find you and bring you to drill. They too can hurt you, though frankly even a dishonorable discharge (let alone a less than honorable discharge) is probably less damaging to your career than being kicked out of residency.

3. You absolutely are deployable. Never mind that the US government, if sufficiently inclined, can draft and deploy whoever they please. There is nothing in the law that protects you from deployment. You're still extremely unlikely to be deployed to the point where you're better off worrying about spending the millions you'll win in the lottery. You're protected by politics and your own uselessness. Medical student and interns are useless, WW3 probably wouldn't see you activated. A resident, as someone who in many states can be licensed to practice medicine, could potentially be activated if something like WW3 were to come along. Barring catastrophe, even the military is not going to risk the fall-out from pulling reserve members out of their civilian training programs.

So what do you do? You work with your unit and program while accepting some personal sacrifice to meet your military obligation with minimal impact on your residency program. Some residency programs will willingly schedule around your drill weekends. Some units will barely require you to actually show up. The more likely situation is somewhere in the middle. Between the two you can usually find a workable solution: going to one day of drill 2 months instead of a full weekend 1 month, getting drill credit for attending a conference or submitting CME, drilling at a full-time medical unit during a weekday you have off, etc.

Bottom line, it takes some communication but you can make it work especially in a specialty like Emergency Medicine. Don't forget the 2 weeks of Annual Training currently required every other year. Again there are solutions like elective and/or vacation time. You just have to understand that the drill time is coming out of your days off not in place of shifts in the ED...

Frankly, most of the people in my program forget I'm in the Guard. I take it as a good thing.
 
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