Flight surgeon post-mil?

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RockDoc28

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I'm a third year AFHPSP student interested in flight surgery, but am wondering what flight surgeons are able or qualified to do when they retire from the military.

Would I be able to work in a primary care clinic? Or go on to do fellowships?

Thanks!

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Limited jobs in the government. Working for private companies doing flight physicals. Many go into safety and occ health. Youd be doing yourself a favor if you got a residency in family med first, then went and did the ram. Or did fm, then did the short course in flight surgery and a masters in safety or similar.

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I'm a third year AFHPSP student interested in flight surgery, but am wondering what flight surgeons are able or qualified to do when they retire from the military.

Anything that a person who only finished an internship could do ... which is not much.

Would I be able to work in a primary care clinic?

In some states. Not all states will license a physician with only one year of post-graduate training.

If you can find someone to hire you. Someone desperate might, and they'd offer terrible wages, and you'd take it, because you'd be desperate too.

Or go on to do fellowships?

You'd have to do a residency first. Lots of people serve out their military commitments as flight surgeons or other GMOs, then go do residency as civilians.


Moral of the story: you need to complete a residency.
 
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To clarify, flight surgeon is a physician who completed a 6 week to 6 month course and is qualified to do flight physicals and run a unit level aeromedical program. A "RAM" is a flight surgeon who is also a graduate of a residency in aerospace medicine (who completed 2-3 years of training) who is board certified in aerospace medicine and either preventative or occupational medicine. A RAM is a specialist in aerospace medicine and expected to lead the field academically and administratively. If you're talking about a career as a flight surgeon, this is the route you would go and the below information applies to being a RAM.

If you only do the RAM training, you typically fall back on a more general occupational/preventive medicine career as a civilian and maybe do some FAA physicals on the side. There are a number of limited full time flight medicine positions with the FAA, NASA, other governments, and private companies. The positions are limited but the people actively pursuing them are also relatively limited and the pool of people with 20+ years of experience is even smaller making it a reasonable plan but not a guarantee

The common alternative is to have a second residency you fall back on. There are some combined FM (or IM) and RAM programs. The other option is to complete a residency before or after the aerospace residency. I (and most others) highly recommend completing one of the more typical residencies to compliment your flight medicine training. It makes your career more flexible, adds to your clinical knowledge, and will make you more competitive for aviation positions. The most common residency would be IM or FM but you can do whatever you want. I believe one of the regional FAA surgeons was a pediatrician until recently. As an example of the far end of the spectrum, there's an FAA guy who did the RAM then went on to do an ENT residency and fellowship in skull base surgery and can now bill himself as one of two aviation neurotologists in the world.
 
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Thanks for the replies everyone! DeadCactus that was a lot of great information, when I posted I was thinking about a RAM. Right now I'm really considering doing what you and sonofva mentioned-- doing a FM residency and then going on to do RAM.

@DeadCactus it seems like you have a lot of knowledge and experience in this area, do you have any tips for someone like me looking at this career path?
 
The biggest advice is to figure out what you're trying to get out of this. Some people really want to spend their career being a physician for pilots. Some people like aviation medicine and want to make it their niche within another clinical specialty. Some people would be better off just watching Top Gun and getting a private pilot license.

Other than that, it's not a particularly competitive path. E-mail the Air Force RAM folks about your interest and they'll probably be excited to talk to you. Then come read some more on SDN because the RAM folks will sugar coat it and SDN will s*** on it. Somewhere between the two you'll find an accurate picture.
 
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I'm a third year AFHPSP student interested in flight surgery, but am wondering what flight surgeons are able or qualified to do when they retire from the military.

Would I be able to work in a primary care clinic? Or go on to do fellowships?

Thanks!


If you are going to persue this path, it would be beneficial to get the terminology correct. Flight Surgeons don't practice flight "surgery" any more than Brigade Surgeons practice surgery. Surgeon in this case is a title. Flight Surgeons practice aviation medicine or aerospace medicine. Yes, I know the term "flight surgery" is commonly used but it might make a negative impression when you are talking with those in the specialty.
 
With a one year internship under your belt, you are not very marketable. With an internship and a few years a flight medicine you are a bit better off. This is the position I'm in and here are some of the options that are available to me. (mil experiance plus an internship) Note that federal jobs will be where you want to focus as you get veteran preference

-Correctional medicine (federal)
-National Guard as a flight surgeon
-Indian Health Services
-VA community clinics
-You could be a MEPS doc
-There are some urgent cares/occ health clinics that will hire you (harder to find, but they are there)
-Wellness/MJ clinics
-I actually found some private security contract companies with contracts in the middle east that were interested.
-There are companies that do medicare home health evals
-If you are entrepreneurial you could start your own clinic, like a direct primary care, or even build something and hire boarded docs to work it.

Anyway, as you can see there are options. Yes, it is always wiser to do a residency, but the reality is if nothing really speaks to you, and you just want to practice and make money for a little while there are plenty of options.
 
You can also be a flight surgeon after you have completed one of the residencies. The AF is esp encouraging this nowadays (FM is prob the most common to go into flight medicine from what I've seen), and it does not mean you have to do RAM as well.
 
Flight surgeon might be the most overrated school in the military. I learned a lot about physicals, but that was about it.

I know you are a non-trad, but what service are you? And as a medical student, what flight surgery course did you attend? There is a big difference between Navy flight surgery school and what the Army and AF do. Not that in the Navy they are necessarily learning a ton more medicine, but the entire course itself would easily be considered much more fun so probably not so overrated.
 
For those that are unfamiliar, the Navy FS course is six months long. You go through the same initial course, Aviation Preflight Indoctrination (API), as pilots and NFOs consisting of basic flight academics and land and swim survival fundamentals. Then you spend a couple of months flying airplanes. Very condensed syllabus flying single engine turboprop, multiengine turboprop, single engine jet and helicopter training aircraft. You will fly formation and do aerobatics, but you will never solo. Lastly is the academic portion that is similar to what the Army and AF do. As such, the additional experience, while not necessarily medically relevant, might be considered very fun to those interested in flight medicine. So perhaps not quite as overrated as Andrew_F considers the Army course to be.
 
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Loved the Navy FS course. It was lots of fun and I thought that the aviation training was a great break.
 
HPSP candidate interested in aerospace medicine. I want to make sure I have this straight.
For flight surgeon it seems you do a 1 year internship of what I assume is mostly internal medicine followed whatever branch's training for flight surgeon (Navy, AF, etc.) and then you essentially go to work. Do I have that right? Would I specifically have to do a military residency for this? I know for military RAMS they require to have experience as a flight surgeon first before you can apply but civilian residencies have no such req, i can go straight out of med school (and mayo even has a fellowship!). I've actually read job prospects for this are quite good bc preventive/occupational medicine is picking up steam and most physicians who practice this are in their golden years, meaning they'll be needing incoming folks to pick it up when they retire.
I know people keep saying to do another residency, i.e. family med, but that seems like LOT of time in residency. Would I do the 1 year internship, work as a flight surgeon (for how long?), do something like an internal med residency, then turn right around and do an aerospace residency? That just seems like a lot of CYA, though there is one joint internal med/aerospace residency that might seem to satisfy these concerns.
Would it be possible to do this overseas? Is there any real difference in working life between someone who just does the flight surgeon training and someone who does the RAM?
 
You need an internship for a license to practice medicine. You can meet this bare minimum, do a 6 week to 6 month flight surgeon course, and spend your initial military obligation as a flight surgeon. After this initial tour, you're career either in the military or the civilian world will be significantly stunted as residency training and board certification is the modern expectation for physician training. While you may find a job or manage to continue progressing in a military career, you will more likely find yourself needing to enter a residency to meaningfully continue your career.

Residency is a minimum of 3 years, whether that is a traditional clinical specialty, preventive/occupational medicine, or a residency in aerospace medicine. Combining a more clinical specialty with RAM is a 4 to 5 years in training. The RAM programs would prefer to take people with previous residency training and flight surgeon experience. I would be shocked if they had enough interest to mandate it across all branches though the Air Force at least advertises its program like it is able to do so.

An internship makes you the least marketable, the RAM makes you more marketable, and RAM+FP/IM/EM makes you the most marketable. Whether that is worth the cost of 1 or 2 years is up to you. I would recommend you figure out what you want from a career and then worry about how to get there rather than focusing on how long you want to spend in training.
 
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