Hello, these are a few of my questions regarding Air Force dentistry. I am considering the 3 HPSP.
1. Hours per week? 2. Hours per day? 3. Scrubs or ABU while working? 4. Must you be cleanly shaven every day? 5. Do you have duties other than dentistry? 6. Can you choose your days of vacation? Also for those who did the HPSP path, My recruiter told me that one year AEGD residency counts towards a year of pay back. Has this changed over the years?
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I've been out three years and knowledge is getting rusty, but the AF forum has been slow so I will try to answer:
1. Nominally 40ish hours/week; can easily creep up past 50 with some after hours recordkeeping / training /etc. Not a stressful schedule. Typical appointments 1hr each; more time for complex procedures; usually work out of only one chair; usually no hygiene checks / exams while you're scheduled with procedures.
2. Nominally 8hrs/day. See above. Like so much else in the military, much will depend on your commanding officer. He/she can make your life easy or hard. I found myself working 70hrs/week for a year or so on an undermanned base under a very demanding commander. Mostly additional duties, not patient time. Probably not a typical USAF experience, but it does point to the fact that in the military your working life is really determined by the personality and attitude of your commander. He/she will have FAR more power over you than a civilian boss, for better or worse. If "worse," know that you'll probably have a different commander in a year tor two and things will be different; the AF moves people around often as they climb in rank.
3. Report in ABUs; change into scrubs for workday; change back to ABUs to leave clinic or go home.
4. Yes, and hair cut to regulations, and uniform to regulations. Certain facial hair is permitted (eg well trimmed mustache). There are very elaborate rules about all this, and you will be held to them precisely: the military is a
stickler for appearances.
5. Yes. Your patient schedule is quite a bit lighter than in civilian practice, and your additional duties heavier.
6. You can pretty much choose your vacation days, but requests are subject to approval by your commander.
7. Sort of. The AEGD year counts for a year of payback, but it also costs you a year of obligation, so the net effect is that the AEGD year does NOT reduce your time obligation. So if you have a 3-year HPSP, you will owe 3 years active duty beyond the AEGD year, so 4 total. That said, the AEGD-1 is probably the best year you will ever invest in your skills as a dentist -- really excellent training that will take you far beyond what you learn in dental school.
The paid AEGD residency and the D-school tuition benefits are the two biggest benefits to HPSP. Pretty huge, really. If you can get the scholarship I would say take it. But you have to be prepared to give in return: the military will make demands on you that a civilian employer cannot: sometimes trivial ones, like having your hair cut a certain way or peeing for drug tests on demand while some dude in camo stands there and watches your every move; and sometimes big things, like working looong hours if told to or deploying overseas. As long as you can live with that, jump at the HPSP.
