Hey all -
Been a lot of talk recently about people unhappy with military medicine and wanting out. I read a lot of posts from attendings in different services and I was wondering if there were any national guard attendings current or prior who had anything to share..
For example:
Your current status and when you joined
Overall impressions
Deployments
Would you do it again? Recommend it?
And any other comments would be welcome....
I can not speak for the physcians direcetly but I can tell you as a National Guard PA-C with 7 years experience as an AMEDD provider and incoming MS1, what it is like to be a medical provider in the guard.
My BOLC was 2 weeks long when I went thru it. Very easy and low stress. It was kind of a joke how easy it was, but of course the guard will not kick out a physician if he or she can not pass basic markmanship.
You will likely be assigned to a state medical detachment/command, a level 2 ASMC (Area support medical company), or to a battalion aid station (level 1) with a line unit.
Due to physician and mid level provider shortages in the guard expect to be deployed at least every 2 years for up to 120 days (90 days boots on ground, and 30 days for pre and post mob requirements) at current operational tempo. Most of the physicians in my state work with large cilivian medical groups that can absorb the lost time from their physicians and are supportive. For smaller groups deployments are stressful on the employer and on the physicians.
When not deployed you can expect one weekend a month (often Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) and a 2-3 week annual training requirement. Often you will have obligations to complete outside of drill weekends such as PHAs needing a signature outside of drill weekend because a solider has been selected for training and the unit can't send them without a valid PHa and they will expect you to sign the PHA that night from home.
Drill weekends are boring and mundane most of the time. You will spend 80 percent of your time in staff meetings, CUBs (commander update briefs), doing profile reviews, fit for duties, coordinating mental health care, and completing annual peroidic health assessments.
As a medical student most of your drills will likely be boring and spent trying to look busy. At other times your drills will be a lot of fun and interesting.
The other 20 percent of the time you will get a chance to due some unique training such as firing weapons, trauma training, comunications training, land navigation, etc.
You will not be authorized to treat soldiers on drill weekends as a medical student or as a licensed physician. You will likely only get to truly practice army medicine during Annual training and during a deployment, (in otherwords, no sick call or clinic on drill weekends) due to National Guard policy.
My overall impression is that most of the providers I work with enjoy it and are planning on sticking around for 20 years. I would say overall most would do it again.
