Army Becoming Surgeon for FST

[ijustwannasaveppl]

Hi guys. I want to be a surgeon on an Army Forward Surgical Team, and I'm not sure what steps to take. The recruiter at my dual credit program is just interested in high school grads he can send to basic. (surprise, surprise!) 😉I'm a hs senior and not in it for the money; I am genuinely excited about caring for the demographic. I'm very independent and my parents have informed me multiple times I will pay my own way.
(they're also against the 'military thing' because I'm female. )
SO, I apply for a school like TAMU, get my four year degree in something premed, then what?
Do I do ROTC at college? Do I apply for the HPSP? I'm looking for a "here's what to do after high school
graduation," and any info you might have could help.
Right now I'm volunteering at a rural surgical clinic and taking college credits while doing a online highschool program and working four days a week. Thanks so much for your time, and don't be afraid to be totally honest lol!

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[HighPriest]

Go to college, then go to medical school, then get into general surgery, then complete your residency. Take the FAP route. That way you'll have some actual experience under your belt before you decide to make this mistake.

The totally honest answer is that every few weeks we get postings from high school students or college students applying for medical school. This is good. This is what the forum is for. However, as you'll see if you do a quick scan through the thread, very few people in your position end up where they think they want to be when they get where they're going. Because of that, I cannot possibly be more confident in my recommendation that you delay signing up for anything DoD-related for as long as possible. Once you've made the agreement, Faust, you're stuck - and let me assure you that for most people things get real ugly once you've crossed the tracks.

If you're going to love being a military surgeon - with constant deployments, poor surgical case loads, lots of time sitting on your hands while deployed, and the loads of other reasons why someone might shy away from military medicine - then you're going to love it whether you sign up for HPSP or not. But if you're going to end up hating it, you have the chance up front to save yourself from some grief.

Also keep in mind that you have at LEAST 4 years of college, 4 years of med school, 5-6 years of residency before you have a chance of being deployed further forward than your Auntie's house for Thanksgiving. So who knows what the deployment temp will be like in 14 years. You're talking 2-3 presidents from now. If Trump gets elected, you'll probably have plenty of opportunities. But by that time you might have 4 kids and two husbands, or three dogs and a divorce, or 12 cats, or a winning lottery ticket, or a degree in Native American Studies and a solid job in telemarketing. It's a long way from now.

 

[HighPriest]

Also, if you're going to become a self-loathing general surgeon, you should shy away from emoticons. Your life is destined to become a constant frowny-face. 🙁

 

[ijustwannasaveppl]

Go to college, then go to medical school, then get into general surgery, then complete your residency. Take the FAP route. That way you'll have some actual experience under your belt before you decide to make this mistake.

The totally honest answer is that every few weeks we get postings from high school students or college students applying for medical school. This is good. This is what the forum is for. However, as you'll see if you do a quick scan through the thread, very few people in your position end up where they think they want to be when they get where they're going. Because of that, I cannot possibly be more confident in my recommendation that you delay signing up for anything DoD-related for as long as possible. Once you've made the agreement, Faust, you're stuck - and let me assure you that for most people things get real ugly once you've crossed the tracks.

If you're going to love being a military surgeon - with constant deployments, poor surgical case loads, lots of time sitting on your hands while deployed, and the loads of other reasons why someone might shy away from military medicine - then you're going to love it whether you sign up for HPSP or not. But if you're going to end up hating it, you have the chance up front to save yourself from some grief.

Also keep in mind that you have at LEAST 4 years of college, 4 years of med school, 5-6 years of residency before you have a chance of being deployed further forward than your Auntie's house for Thanksgiving. So who knows what the deployment temp will be like in 14 years. You're talking 2-3 presidents from now. If Trump gets elected, you'll probably have plenty of opportunities. But by that time you might have 4 kids and two husbands, or three dogs and a divorce, or 12 cats, or a winning lottery ticket, or a degree in Native American Studies and a solid job in telemarketing. It's a long way from now.

Thank you for your honesty! I've heard plenty of horror stories - years of sitting around at Ft. Leavenworth sound pretty scary for sure. But maybe I'll luck out and Trump will get elected lol. In the meantime, I'll continue to look into FAP.

 

[ijustwannasaveppl]

I'm going to assume the people featured in this article are rare exceptions?! From what I've heard, my chances of even getting surgical experience are pretty slim.
http://www.talkingproud.us/Military/Medevac/Medevac/FST.html

 

[HighPriest]

I'm going to assume the people featured in this article are rare exceptions?! From what I've heard, my chances of even getting surgical experience are pretty slim.
http://www.talkingproud.us/Military/Medevac/Medevac/FST.html

Well, to begin with I have to question the article's integrity as they've misidentified the person in their first picture.

That article is from 2012, and basically just talks about what an FST is theoretically capable of doing. The DoD is like a used car salesman. You have to take what they say with a grain of salt. It's the difference between what an FST CAN do, and what it does.

There are busy FSTs out there. They're almost exclusively caring for natives, which represent the bulk of the casualties. There are also FSTs where a surgeon operates 3-4 times in 6 months. You never know to which one you'll go, but most experiences hedge towards few cases with lots of downtime. By and large, you'll get more trauma experience at a civilian trauma center.

Taking care of soldiers is great, but it is definitely not the way you see it in the press or in movies.

In terms of it being rare to get surgical experience, I'm not sure how you mean. A general surgeon in the Army today will definitely get deployed, probably many times during even a short commitment. But he may or may not do much while deployed.