In the military, incompetent leaders aren't fired, they just get reassigned, and then wreak havoc and spread misery elsewhere:
I'd like to share with you a little anecdote. When I was deployed as a Battalion Surgeon with a Marine infantry unit to Iraq, we had this complete psycho of a Regiment Surgeon overseeing us. I've never met anybody like him before. This guy was the most ego-maniacal, power hungry freak of nature I've ever encountered.
We're in the middle of a war zone, and all this guy cares about is bolstering his numbers so he can advance his career. He makes up some arbitrary rule about HIV readiness, making our entire battalion's HIV status out-of-date. Somehow, he convices the Regimental CO that Marines will be dying left and right if we don't get their HIV status current. So my CO gets super pissed, chews me out with all sorts of F-bombs, and orders us to get blood draws on the entire battalion. Remember, we're in the middle of a war zone, with Marines spread out all over the AO. Obviously, the military medical system in Iraq wasn't designed with the intention of doing HIV draws.
The whole thing was a tremendous fiasco. First off, we had to beg for extra medical supplies from other units, pissing them off in the process. Next, we risked many peoples lives--mainly the Corpsmen--sending them over IED-laden roads to remote outposts just so they could draw an HIV sample. Eventually, through unbelievable efforts, we collected the HIV for every single person in the whole battalion. We sent the samples off to the lab. Guess what happened? The transit time from the middle of Iraq all the way to a lab in the US was way too long, and over 90% of the samples had to be destroyed. Lives risked, time wasted, money wasted. All for one person's selfish gain.
Higher ups in the medical system heard about this and got pissed. There was an investigation. But guess what the fallout was? Nothing. This Regimental Surgeon, who actually has a real medical degree (believe it or not), suffered no repercussions. He was merely transferred to another billet.
What pisses me off the most, is that he put people's lives at risk for his own selfish gain. Clearly, he wanted to put on his Fit Rep that all the BAS's under his supervision went from 0-100% medical readiness due to his superior leadership. We were in a combat zone!!! He could have done something useful, like taught airway managment to the Corpsmen. But instead, we spent the entire 7-month deployment dealing with that crap.
Sadly, people like him are all too prevelent in the military. Often, they are the career military folks whose only concern is picking up rank. They could care less who they have to stab in the back to get there, and seem to take a perverse pleasure in wasting resources.
That being said, I have met plenty of kind, selfless career military doctors who are genuine heros. They are truly inspirational. But unfortunately, they seem to be in the minority.
For anybody reading this and considering a career as a military doctor, please realize you will have plenty of colleagues like this guy. And no matter how ruthless and incompetent they are, they just seem to continue climbing the ladder.
Maybe it's therapeutic to vent. I would say that 1) you don't join the military to make money, you do it to serve; 2) you don't join, expecting not to be deployed, because you will be; 3) you don't join so you can drive drunk and pick-up hookers; I think the UCMJ is a great thing for the most part, it holds people to a higher standard of behavior, and in my experience, it's usually only applied to the most grevious of transgressors. Anyhow, I think you and others make some great points about the current state of military medicine, I would like to suggest that maybe all you complainers get together and do something constructive, like writing a position statement you could give to whatever persons or organizations might do the most good in effecting a change. Just a thought, I'm sure there are many other possibilities.
