I'm a pediatric critical care fellow almost finished with training. I have some questions about joining the military after training and was wondering if someone in this forum might know the answers?
1) What is the demand for the speciality I'm in...
It is hard to quantify "demand". All three services have them but almost all have been trained "from the inside" i.e. not someone like you who is fully trained up wanting to join. Practically that means that the people who are in owe a fair amount of payback time and I know that all three services have a good few peds intensivists who are at the beginning of their payback. I would make a (weak) speculation that none of the services are desperate for peds intensivists, but that doesn't mean that they wouldn't be willing to take you. IIRC, the places with them are:
SAMMC (San Antonio)-Army, AF
Tripler (HI)-Army
Madigan (WA)-Army
National Capitol Consortium (DC)-Army/Navy
NMC Portsmouth (VA)-Navy (in theory AF could be there, but there aren't any AF PICU staff and they are fat with Navy staff)
NMC San Diego-Navy
Wright Patterson-it would be AF, but I do not believe that they have any there given the integration with the civilian children's hospital in Dayton
... or does the military allow it to be translated to other specialities in medicine (adult ICU, ER, transport physician, etc.)
If you were active duty, you would be a peds intensivist while at home station. While deployed, yes, they might task you as a transport physician and even to work with adult ICU patients (your skill set is relavent). While A1 is correct that the Army likes to deploy fully trained pediatricians and peds subspecialists as GMOs (think GP), they don't tend to do that to their peds intensivists. They're going to be just as useful dealing with the 22 year old trauma patient as the adult guys, for obvious reasons. The AF and USN deploy them similarly: as pediatric ICU docs who can help with transport and adult ICU.
2) Can practicing physicians join the reserves without giving up most of the civilian life? What kind of committment is that? Can I continue to be in academics and the military (not Uniformed Services University mind you, but a non-government institute)?
In the years that I've been on this site and posting frequently in the .mil forum, I have never seen a reserve physician come on here and share their experiences (there is a reserve nurse who's come on periodically). That becomes problematic for answering your question in a realistic way. The reserve and active duty experiences are drastically different and entail their own separate challenges. There are definitely reserve physicians out there (you know that Lee Burnett is a physician in the reserves, right?). I would get out there and bug people IRL who will need to speculate less. Personal opinion: while AF medicine rightfully gets a lot of critique here on SDN, AFRES medicine may be very good. The AF, as a whole, has generally done a good job having the reserves with an integrated mission and, to my knowledge, the AFRES especially has a robust and active medivac mission. I always wonder why people think that (active duty) AF medicine is the way to go over other services, but, in this case, I would say don't ignore the AFRES in your research.
3) Does being in pediatrics specificially prevent one from being deployed overseas, or does the speciality not matter?
No. ALL the services deploy their pediatricians with regularity. Hearts-and-minds thing (which, of course, kinda goes to crap when someone unloads on 16 civilians). AF pediatricians and subs tend to deploy as pediatricians (and can be put in an ICU position regardless of specialty). Army pediatricians and subs tend to deploy as GMOs (though, as said, my impression is that intensivists go as such), and Navy peds and subs are more similar to the AF though a few with get tasked to GMO positions.
4) Do all branches of the military have pediatric physicians (my guess is yes, but I don't know for sure)?
Yes. And you could argue that pediatrics is one of the few areas that milmed actually does pretty well in (though any individual hospital, in any service, might not really show their support all that well).
Just some questions I had. Thanks for answering.
