Yes, more HPSP & residency questions...

[hsouth]

Ok, the question weighing on my mind is this...

When you get to the point of matching for residencies, you have to put an AF (for example) residency as your first choice, right? Can your second choice be civilian match? If you're going into internal medicine for example and there is only one AF IM residency, do you place that as first and civilian deferment next? Then transitional? Or if there are 4 possible residency programs, can you put 1 as your first choice, another as your second and then civilian match for your others? (Or some other shuffling around of military and civilian with military always being first choice?) How does this all work?

I'd like to get this all straight in my mind before I make my decision for the scholarship or not.

Thanks!

~H

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[hsouth]

Ok, I think I got this issue worked out. You must list all possilbe military residencies first to match, and if you DON'T match for any of them then you can match for civilian. So if there are 4 peds possible residencies you list them 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5th as civilian deferment. Yes??

Now, on to my next questions...

How good is military residency training? It is competitive with civilian? Will you come out equally trained?

Say I do the Army HPSP and then a military residency, then pay back my 4 years and decide I want out. How competitive am I for a job in the civilian world? Will it be hard to get a position in most hospitals or to join some kind of practice? (Since I don't know what I want to do yet, this is a little open ended)

Thanks for any input!

~H

PS - If you don't feel comfortable answering here, PLEASE PM me!

 

[Heeed!]

Hope this answers your ?. I posted this on the AFIT site, too.

You can list civilian deferment as your first choice. This gives you the opportunity to apply for any civilian program you are interested in. The military match takes place in December and if you are selected for an active duty program, you will be instructed to withdraw from the civilian match at that time. If you are selected for deferment you will continue on in the civilian match and match in a program in March.

Needs of the AF always come first but there's flexibility, too. I have the AF FY 03 match list if anyone would like me to email it to them.

 

[hsouth]

Thanks! I would really appreciate it if you could send that to me. ([email protected]) Does anyone have the same for the Army? Or know if the army has the same policy? Right now I'm leaning towards Army, though not for any one specific reason. (More bases, more choices, right?)

THanks!
~H

 

[hsouth]

Ok, I don't seem to be getting too many answers here...any idea where else I could ask these questions or how I could get in touch with someone who may have some answers to my questions? I asked the local HPSP recruiter if I could get in touch with current residents and she said that they don't keep email addresses for HPSP students once their scholarship is up. Any idea how I could get in touch with Army docs to find out what their feelings on Army medicine are (hours, hospitals etc)?

Thanks again!

~H

 

[brats800]

i'd either 1) search some bio's of military physicians in the specialty you are looking for. i know i've seen some bios that say they were HPSP class of whatever....or 2) just email physicians and ask them what they think about military life (even if they didn't go thru HPSP, they'd still be able to answer that question).

for the navy, there's a website where you can contact detailers for the different specialties...i'd imagine there is a similar site for army. anyway, you could probably email a detailer and ask if they could give you the email of any physicians in their specialty that went thru HPSP...i'd think that they would have that info.

anyway, good luck.