Realize that your primary job in the military is always and forever will be a soldier. That means that w/o anything else said you can pick up a weapon system and take down the enemy if need be. Your 'secondary' job is doing whatever your MOS requires you to do.
It's interesting. While I understand the "soldier first, MOS second" logic, this gets less and less true the more training that goes into your MOS. I have a hunch infantry folks spend a lot more time on the rifle range than helicopter pilots. And that's as it should be. All MOS's should have a basic set of skills, but at a certain point, building up some of those skills beyond that level has a very diminishing return.
Instead of participating in the training like every one during drills or AT, they would sit in the office and bull**** or miraculously dissappear for a couple hours.
There's no excuse for using rank or title to sit on your *****. [edit: apparently I can no longer use a-$-$ to get past the profanity filters...]
That said...
If I have the choice of spending a week on the firing range shooting sniper rifles or doing exercises with demolitions versus spending a week in physician-focused training that will make me a better doctor, I'll do the latter every time.
I would much prefer to fire a rifle than do a week of training in the latest minutia on STD treatment. But the Army is not paying us an officer's salary for three years to become infantry officers. They are paying us to become physicians.
So in spite of my preference to be out in the field, I have an obligation to be the best physician I can be. I'd rather fire weapons, but if I am limited on time, I'll work with my medics to teach them new skills or work with specialists to improve my own abilities as a doctor. The MOS comes first. I'm a physician, and that's my value to the Army. Not how well I shoot.
I agree with you on the notion that physicians, like all MOS's, need a baseline of soldiering skills. But frankly, training much beyond that, as much as I'd like it, can ultimately be a disservice to my patients and by extension the Army.
No excuse for sitting on my duff, saying, "Hey, I'm a doctor, I don't get muddy." But if I'm suffering death-by-powerpoint while the enlisted are marching through the boonies, they can curse me all they want. Fact is, I'd prefer the boonies myself. But duty calls.
