EM/Wilderness Medicine and the Military

[pkpHawks87]

Hey all,

I will be attending medical school in the fall and have been mulling over the HPSP and National Guard possibilities for about a year now. I know that there is a strong likelihood that my desires will change but as of now I am incredibly interested in Emergency Medicine, specifically Wilderness Medicine. I know there are summer programs, 3/4th yr rotations, and fellowships all geared towards wilderness medicine but I was wondering what opportunities exist through the military for such training. Hopefully someone on here can provide some insight.

Thanks!

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[The White Coat Investor]

I'm certified in Advanced Wilderness Life Support. I attended the course with military CME money.

Don't expect to actually do much wilderness medicine while in the military. Very few docs can find a paying job in wilderness medicine. Most are in academics and that is their area of interest but they still make their money working shifts in the ED.

 

[teacherman84]

I'm certified in Advanced Wilderness Life Support. I attended the course with military CME money.

Was this something you did after residency? What program did you attend? Could you give a few more details about this as this is also something I am interested in?

I have looked at the rotation offered by NOLS for medical students, not sure how this will work out with HPSP.

 

[psychbender]

Isn't AWLS part of the EM residency program at Madigan? I think the PD/Assistant PD there wrote a sizeable portion of the text for that class. I remember speaking with one of the instructors when I took it, and he said that several of the EM docs at Madigan were big into WM, and that much of the lightning injury research was being conducted there.

For med students, I would not count on the Army paying for your Wilderness Medicine rotation (why would they, its just another elective?). That having been said, I did a month of Wilderness Med in Belize as a med student, and it was quite fun (though a tad expensive).

 

[Gastrapathy]

http://www.med.navy.mil/sites/navmedmpte/nomi/opmed/Pages/MountainMedicineCourse.aspx

You never know, if they have extra quotas, you might be able to score one.

 

[The White Coat Investor]

Was this something you did after residency? What program did you attend? Could you give a few more details about this as this is also something I am interested in?

I have looked at the rotation offered by NOLS for medical students, not sure how this will work out with HPSP.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=awls

 

[burs0028]

From a former Wilderness Medical Society Nat'l Student Rep: there's lots of areas that milmed and wildmed overlap. Anyone who's deployed should be able to attest to that IMHO. DMOs, High Altitude physiology, endurance athlete training, even ophthalmology has overlap in some respects. Pick up Auerbach's latest edition of "wilderness medicine" (also available on MD consult which your school will probably give you access to once you start).

Go to wms.org. Used to be a list of all the wild med electives on there with reviews or at least links for more info (including the belize, NOLS, and WMS courses). You can see if your school has an active student interest group; if not start one! It looks great on the CV and is a lot of fun. I did that in AZ and we had canyoneering trips, invited in guest speakers, hosted lectures for each other...it was great. Emergency med is the easiest way to go, but FPs, Surgeons, you name it; lots of different types of docs enjoy wilderness medicine...the problem is getting paid for it. Most civilian jobs are volunteer only, or pay a next to nothing compared to working in a typical clinic. Ithink it's fair to say that most physicians practice standard medicine most of the time and use weekends/vacations or conferences to get more wilderness time in.

You can imagine that you'll be treating rare tropical diseases and doing high-angle rescue as a Special Forces physician, but this is rare and much more likely as a corpsman than a physician. The DoD spends a lot of money to train us and doesn't like to spoil that investment.