How do I become a faculty member at USUHS?

[Perrotfish]

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I am pretty sure that whatever I do with my career, I want part of it to involve teaching. Ideally I'd like to be involved in both clinical and preclinical education, as well as curriculum planning. Is there a pathway for physicians who want to get involved with USUHS? Other than doing research and applying for instructor status, is there anything I can do to position myself to teach? Any rotations I should do as a resident, or billets I should try to get? Who even teaches preclinical at USUHS? Are the instructors active duty physicians?

 

[Cooperd0g]

There are a lot of civilian PhD professors, but also a fair amount of military physician instructors. Academic module directors, two per module, tend to be one civilian and one military. The mil academic cadre are all active duty and nearly all physicians (a health services support, PhD, physiologist here and there). Most of the military physicians also see clinic at the USU clinic, over at WRNMMC hospital or other nearby places like Fort Belvoir, the Pentagon clinic, etc. There are also a lot of mil and civ physicians that are only brought in from local hospitals for the occasional small group activity so they aren't very active in instruction - just on those random days for that particular specialty.

I'm sure others will have more knowledge on how to land a job, but just from talking with a few it seems like many of them were up for orders, there was a spot open at USUHS, and they wanted it. I haven't seen a mil doc that actively teaches below O-4 and nearly all are O-6 so the billets may not be available to you for a while.

 

[denali]

There's a whole page on the USUHS DOM site with the relevant information and resources. Not sure what's different for other specialties.

Failing that, if your MTF trains USUHS medical students, talk with the clerkship director and they can point you in the right direction.

 

[155HE]

It you are stationed at WRNMMC (or nearby) as staff, and you would like to get a faculty appointment, you can apply. You have to spend a certain amount of time teaching the medical students in exchange for the appointment. To get a tenured position, you must be actually stationed at USU. Go here: http://www.usuhs.edu/asd/instructions/index.html#1100set

 

[Ziehl-Neelsen]

I am pretty sure that whatever I do with my career, I want part of it to involve teaching. Ideally I'd like to be involved in both clinical and preclinical education, as well as curriculum planning. Is there a pathway for physicians who want to get involved with USUHS? Other than doing research and applying for instructor status, is there anything I can do to position myself to teach? Any rotations I should do as a resident, or billets I should try to get? Who even teaches preclinical at USUHS? Are the instructors active duty physicians?

Step 1a. Be so terrible at your job that your branch of service fears having you "in the fleet" and calculates that you'll cause less damage teaching medical students than practicing medicine (this also used to work for getting a billet at the AFIP when it was still alive).

Step 1b. Enroll a child in EFMP and then argue that his/her disability is so unique that appropriate therapy can only be delivered in the D.C. metro area.

Step 1c. Call in every political connection and favor you've accumulated.

Step 2. Slightly rejigger the course syllabus from the previous director to make it seem like you "put your stamp on the course" and modernized it.

Step 3. Spend one day a month or so at a local MTF so you can boast about "how many hats" you wear when someone questions how much work you actually do (make sure you don't do anything super useful like cover call or cover an inpatient service during summer or Christmas break--a morning of clinic at a low acuity place like Fort Meade or the Rader Clinic is more than enough).

Step 3. Moonlight/Lecture like crazy to make some extra green.

Step 4. ???????

Step 5. Profit.