Army Reserves and Private Practice

[rando97]

Hey there!!
I’ll be starting medical school next fall and have been in the Army reserves for about 5 years. I enlisted after my first semester of undergrad (non medical MOS), mainly to pay for school. I haven’t minded it so far and actually would go as far as to say that I've enjoyed a lot of it. I am considering commissioning as a medical student for the MDSSP program. My main motivation is that I haven't minded the enlisted side and my wife and I have a 9 month old so between the Post 9/11 GI bill ( I was on COVID-19 orders long enough to be eligible) and the MDSSP money we could way decrease our loan burden and have decent quality of life.

My only hesitation is I’m wondering how big of a hindrance my commitment to the reserves would be when it’s time to find a job after residency. Anyone have experience with this?? Would I be stuck only working with large corporate groups or would the commitment not be as big a deal? I'm interested in Anesthesiology if that makes a difference. Any insight would be great, there’s tons of info out there about Active duty but not much on the Reserves.

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[DMBandFan86]

There are places / groups that are military friendly and places that are not. There are places that say they are military friendly, but are not. Academic or VA may be the most military friendly, but not all of them. Same goes with residency programs. You will have to navigate the system.

I’m not anesthesia, but never have had an issue with being in the reserves. I’m sure I have been screened out of interviews by places (career and residency), but the places I did interview at only respected my reserve time.

That being said, know what you are getting in to. Are you going to have to use vacation time for your 3 day drill weekends and 2 weeks a year commitment? What will happen if you deploy on short notice or extended periods? Those are things you will want to know before accepting a job. But sounds like you have about a decade before you have to worry about it.

MDSSP is a nice program to have a decent lifestyle during school. Afterwards, not always worth it with payback and time commitment. For instance, as anesthesia you could pick up a weekend call or locums and make much more money than the 2 days drill. You also might end up working about every weekend when you factor in drill weekends depending on how your group is set up for call.

I was enlisted and then did MDSSP, but payback then started during residency. Now it is after unless you do Strap. Which is probably your best option. I personally wouldn’t do just plain MDSSP with the current payback method. Just not worth it in my opinion and you loose out on incentives when you are in payback.

 

[el mero mero]

Hi!
Reserves would preclude you from small practices.
There are plenty of larger practices that would work with a reserve doc. From my experience, almost everyone (docs and admin included) is supportive of people that are willing to serve their country.

I'm anesthesia and hospital-employed. My employer has a pretty generous military leave policy.
There are also academics, the VA, and military-civilian (GS) jobs that mesh pretty well with being a reservist and a practicing doc.

We currently have too many anesthesiologists in the Army Reserve, which is messing with some incentives. It doesn't impact me as I'm still in STRAP repayment. I'm not too concerned about the short-term glut, but I wanted to let you know for full disclosure.

MDSSP/STRAP/HPLR are good programs if executed correctly.
Tricare Reserve Select is another huge benefit.