I'm Army.
I'm a first year resident. I haven't been on these boards in a while, but I know that when I used to frequent this board as a medical student, I noticed the same thing - most of the complaints were from AF/Navy rather than Army. Most of the complaints (GMO-land, lack of slots in non-primary care fields) were about something that was not as much of a problem in the Army. Maybe the Army HPSPers on this board realize that, relative to AF/N, there's less reason to complain regarding these issues, and therefore we don't. Someone mentioned above that maybe the Army HPSPers are more "Duty, Honor, Country" - this may be true. I don't consider myself super patriotic but it doesn't take a lot of research to know that you're going to deploy for longer to more austere locations in the Army than the other services. That's something I think most Army applicants have already accepted, so, again, hard to complain.
Here's been my experience: I got my first choice residency (non-primary care, relatively competitive) in my first choice location. Full disclosure: I'm prior service (that counts a fair amount) and I would have been competitive for my residency even in the civilian world. I've talked with some of the people who didn't get their first choice or who ended up Transitional/GMO and they were either trying for something super-competitive (in the Army, these would be the surgical subspecialties-esp Ortho-and radiology) for which there were not a whole lot of slots or they had stats that just weren't competitive.
My biggest complaints? Nurses that don't follow the orders that are written for the patients because they were at shift change or "I didn't get to it"
, all the mandatory training (EO, POSH, TBI, PRT, etc), and getting paged at 2 o'clock in the morning because a patient wants to know if they are going to be able to eat bacon for breakfast
. With the possible exception of #2, they seem to be problems that can occur in any residency in the nation, so there's no need to complain in the Mil Med-specific forum.
It's not all peaches and cream, and if you have any specific questions, I'm sure I can gripe with the best of them. As I've recommended before (and I did myself), find the HPSP reg for the branch you're interested in and read it thoroughly. It's amazing how many of the issues that people complain about are spelled out in the reg and therefore shouldn't come as a surprise.
I'm not exactly "Army - Don't Do It!" But, hindsight being 20/20, I'd probably steer you away from HPSP in general unless 1) you're prior service and therefore you understand the system and it could be financially in your favor, 2)you really have a strong desire to be in the military and are less likely to be annoyed with the rules/restrictions, or 3)you're thinking more on the order of primary care vs more financially rewarding specialities.
Just my 2 cents.
