Army internal medicine?

[studentdoctoraubs]

Hello everyone,

I'm a prospective HPSP student investigating the hell out of this before I make a decision! I'm leaning toward Army for a variety of reasons- unique training and experience, opportunity to deploy, serving soldiers, and financial freedom following active duty to potentially pursue a career in global "humanitarian" work. That being said, I'm trying to gain some insight as to what internal medicine looks like following residency in the Army.

How much say do you have in your outcome as an internist following residency? I would love to do inpatient care or operational medicine as a BN surgeon or flight surgeon. Are these options available for IM docs, or are you basically practicing outpatient primary care on a base? If anyone has experience in this field, please share! I would love to hear your personal accounts, even if they slightly differ from my trajectory.

Thank you!

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[HighPriest]

You will likely have the chance to do inpatient care. There are posts where most of the internists are in clinic, but I think you could finagle that a little due to the relative shortage of internists. But I might be wrong.

I'm not sure you understand what a battalion surgeon does. Maybe you do. If you are interested in not seeing patients and doing a lot of paper pushing and talking to a line officer that probably sees you as a necessary pain in the @$$ about how the medics are doing, then sure. You can be a BN surgeon.

You can be a flight surgeon, but if you complete your residency, you'll probably end up doing IM stuff. The Army, at least in theory, doesn't want physicians to join so that they can do Army stuff. They, theoretically, want you to do doctor stuff. In practice, you end up doing all kinds of "Army" stuff, but it is mostly the banal, mind-killer stuff like online training and urinalyses.

 

[WernickeDO]

Hello everyone,

I'm a prospective HPSP student investigating the hell out of this before I make a decision! I'm leaning toward Army for a variety of reasons- unique training and experience, opportunity to deploy, serving soldiers, and financial freedom following active duty to potentially pursue a career in global "humanitarian" work. That being said, I'm trying to gain some insight as to what internal medicine looks like following residency in the Army.

How much say do you have in your outcome as an internist following residency? I would love to do inpatient care or operational medicine as a BN surgeon or flight surgeon. Are these options available for IM docs, or are you basically practicing outpatient primary care on a base? If anyone has experience in this field, please share! I would love to hear your personal accounts, even if they slightly differ from my trajectory.

Thank you!

You can certainly become a battalion or flight "surgeon" after IM residency, but recognize that you will not be practicing medicine in those jobs, and definitely not anything that resembles internal medicine. If your goals shift and you want to sub-specialize instead, that is also an option. It's not unheard of for sub-specialists to take operational jobs, but it is less common.

Keep reading this forum for more examples of unique training and experiences as an Army doctor. You may have the opportunity to travel to beautiful Ft. Irwin for an all expenses paid trip to NTC, or maybe even spend 4 weeks in a classroom in Alabama. Seriously though, the sexy things like Airborne and Ranger school are only available if you are attached to those units, and as an IM trained doc you are more likely to be attached to a CSH or PROFIS'd to a deploying unit.

 

[studentdoctoraubs]

Thank you @HighPriest and @WernickeDO! I had totally misunderstood some of those positions, so thank you for the clarifications. So, are there many operational opportunities for IM doctors in the Army? It sounds like most of the work is just outpatient/inpatient hospital work on bases?

 

[HighPriest]

Thank you @HighPriest and @WernickeDO! I had totally misunderstood some of those positions, so thank you for the clarifications. So, are there many operational opportunities for IM doctors in the Army? It sounds like most of the work is just outpatient/inpatient hospital work on bases?

There are definitely operational spots. And as a Sr. CPT or field grade officer those include exciting billets like: sitting at a desk! Working in the hospital command suite! Becoming a consultant to the surgeon general! Or even a hospital commander!

I know what you're asking. Can I do some exciting $#!T out there in the bush with a bunch of horny 18 year old privates who try to shoot or &*$U everything they come across?
Yeah, those things can happen, but it's really, really unlikely. The vast majority of IM physicians in the Army are seeing clinics and treating inpatients - mostly healthy, young inpatients with few medical problems. They're doing online training. They're attending mandatory hospital pep sessions. They're managing their clinic staff. And if they want to make senior ranks, they're taking operational billets - but not the exciting ones. Unless you find accounting and business management exciting.

If or when you deploy, you'll be in some austere environment (usually), and you may or may not have the chance to treat sick soldiers or wounded foreign nationals. But, remember, the Army doesn't keep chronically ill people in the field. They get evacuated. If they're a foreign national, they stay until they can go somewhere else. And major trauma usually doesn't require a lot of IM input. Instead, you're often doing sick call and checking for trench foot or jock itch or the clap in those horny 18 year olds who are out shooting and $&#king everything. And sometimes you're just spending your days jogging between the gym and the DFAC.

There are Army missions, but they are very few and very far between and very competitive. I don't know how many. In ENT we had one. Sometimes. And if you weren't at Tripler, then you didn't go.

 

[workaholic181]

I recently turned down army HPSP. I also felt like I wanted IM but the fact of the matter is it’s impossible to know what kind of medicine you’ll want to practice now.

Honestly the Navy sounds kind of more up your alley. In the Navy you will likely have a GMO tour right out of school during which time you could be a flight surgeon out in the fleet or with a usmc unit. Then you could do residency in the civilian world.