Flight Surgery tour: Helpful when reapplying for residencies?

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I am now an intern finnishing my prelim year in IM before starting a flight surgery tour for the Air Force. When starting medcial school I wanted to be an Orthopaedic surgeon. I made many attempts at my program to get research opportunities but nothing ever panned out. In addition to this my step scores are less than desireable for applying to Ortho, with a step one of 210. Did the best I could to study for the remaining step's but was unable to do much better. I then tried to get excited about other specialties, and gravitated toward ER. Applied ER after 4th year of Med school with great letters and some research and got passed over by the Military Match, most likely due to the fact that I ranked Civilian Deffered first. Problem is i never really wanted ER and instead of trying to reapply during my prelim year I decided I'd like to really experience as much as I could with the Air Force as a physician, so I'm going for a flight surgery tour in the hopes that it will make a more attractive candidate for whatever residency I apply for. Also the reason I picked an IM prelim year is that most of the medicine I will practice as a flight surgeon will be more like medicine than surgery and having a solid basis in medicine would only make me better at taking care of my post surgical patients in the future.

Sorry for the long narrative, the jist is as follows...

Does anyone have any idea how helpful flight surgery tours are when applying for civilian and military Ortho residencies?

And what are the chances with some decent Ortho research during my four years of Flight surgery plus my crappy board scores of getting any Ortho spot?

Thanks in advance for the help guys

 

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I am now an intern finnishing my prelim year in IM before starting a flight surgery tour for the Air Force. When starting medcial school I wanted to be an Orthopaedic surgeon. I made many attempts at my program to get research opportunities but nothing ever panned out. In addition to this my step scores are less than desireable for applying to Ortho, with a step one of 210. Did the best I could to study for the remaining step's but was unable to do much better. I then tried to get excited about other specialties, and gravitated toward ER. Applied ER after 4th year of Med school with great letters and some research and got passed over by the Military Match, most likely due to the fact that I ranked Civilian Deffered first. Problem is i never really wanted ER and instead of trying to reapply during my prelim year I decided I'd like to really experience as much as I could with the Air Force as a physician, so I'm going for a flight surgery tour in the hopes that it will make a more attractive candidate for whatever residency I apply for. Also the reason I picked an IM prelim year is that most of the medicine I will practice as a flight surgeon will be more like medicine than surgery and having a solid basis in medicine would only make me better at taking care of my post surgical patients in the future.

Sorry for the long narrative, the jist is as follows...

Does anyone have any idea how helpful flight surgery tours are when applying for civilian and military Ortho residencies?

And what are the chances with some decent Ortho research during my four years of Flight surgery plus my crappy board scores of getting any Ortho spot?

Thanks in advance for the help guys

Extremely helpful in several ways for AF. You've been through the military match before, remember there are points you get from an operational tour that outweigh more traditional, validated metrics like Step I. Historically this has made it almost unfair to med school applicants in some fields, since there's constantly a 'backlog' of GMO applicants who start the game spotted these extra points (I forget how many) that are entirely unavailable to them. So just fyi that may have had more to do with your no-match into ER than civ def preference, because in general the military doesn't care a great deal about your preferences.

Practically speaking, the expectation is that you'll come back into internship a little rusty on academic, evidence-based medicine but relatively strong (compared to new grads) in the intangibles of being a physician and being in the military. When applying, you're going to be able to talk doing barrel rolls in a fighter jet and running a FOB for 800 OEF deployers with two bandaids and an otoscope. In garrison, it's likely that you'll get tasked with tons of clinical oversight and administrative responsibilities that are well beyond your rank or training, all of which look stellar on a CV. You're going to schmooze with commanders and get great letters, and when you're interviewing for those ortho spots there's a high probability that the PD, chair, or someone will be an ex-FS. All of a sudden you're swapping stories and become that much more memorable and attractive of an applicant.

*Disclaimer: a GMO FS tour is a generally crappy, thankless job, often boring, with little immediate reward and tons of drawbacks. That doesn't mean there aren't significant positives though, and those positives can be highlighted and used to your advantage in certain situations. Having a set of wings can open doors in the AF if you're planning on staying in for a bit. And being able to get into a residency like ortho that you wouldn't otherwise have been qualified for in the civilian world is one of the often overlooked benefits of milmed.