3 weeks to do a military course during residency?

[Tiger26]

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So I'm trying to plan out my fourth year schedule and definitely planning on applying for EM next year, but I've been in the Army National Guard since I graduated from high school and really want to do the 6 week Army Flight Surgeon course sometime during M4 year.

Ideally I'd like to finish it all next year, but I have the option of doing the first 3 weeks next year and then the rest later (i.e. during residency?). The only thing that would cause me to split it into two would be to have the flexibility to make sure that I can get all the other rotations next year that I want and keep my vacation free for the prime interview months.

Basically, the question I'm asking is how this would go over with residencies? Technically, they would have to let me do it once I had military orders in hand, but I don't want to be that guy and would never let it go there anyway by forcing anyone's hand. So, would it be possible to just prolong residency for 3 weeks or use a little vacation or elective time or something? Would program directors be receptive to this?

Thanks

 

[Tiger26]

?

 

[ccfccp]

I'm not sure if this would be possible (but I'm suffering from matchitis... so I'll share my opinion anyway...) but many programs have 2-3 electives and you may be able to work with the PD to use some of this time for the extra 3 weeks.

 

[anonymousEM]

I don't have direct experience with this but did have a classmate who used an elective month to fulfill military obligations.

 

[Kasey]

You could probably use elective time to do this, but you should be aware that you will almost certainly not have elective time your first year and quite possibly not until your third year depending on the program. So you probably couldn't do the 3 weeks in consecutive years, if that makes a difference to you.