All Branch Topic (ABT) Military and Family

[Tinyoverlord16]

Hi Everyone!

I am a pre-med student trying to weigh my options. I am an Army Brat. My dad served 26 years and retired a few years ago. So we all get a good picture, no, I don't have a relationship with my dad. It is not because of the military and the job he had in the Army.

Anyway, I want to be a psychiatrist. Even though, I do know not to have my heart set on something before I am in medical school. That is what I am interested in at the moment. That and IM/FM. How are these specialties for a military doctor?

Also how is family life for a military doctor. I have a husband and a 7 month old currently. I do remember my dad being deployed a lot but that was at the height of the wars with Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Operation Desert Storm. If you have a family, do you regret enlisting? Can you find a balance?

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[WernickeDO]

This forum is a good place to find this information. Spend some time reading and using the search function and you can get some great info. Good luck.

 

[Nontradvet89]

I wasn't a military doc, but I shadow one and had a few military docs I spome to while I was in. Some regretted it; some didn't regret it. They seemed well-balanced between family but it's the military. There will be times when you are away from your family, a lot. It's the military, you have to be prepared for that. If you go in thinking about ways to avoid deployments or minimize them, then you are thinking about the military the wrong way.

Other than that, I hear the pay is cral, but you're not really getting paid for being a doctor, just the officer rank and some mild bonuses (compared to civilian compensation).

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[ArmyTiger]

Hi Everyone!

I am a pre-med student trying to weigh my options. I am an Army Brat. My dad served 26 years and retired a few years ago. So we all get a good picture, no, I don't have a relationship with my dad. It is not because of the military and the job he had in the Army.

Anyway, I want to be a psychiatrist. Even though, I do know not to have my heart set on something before I am in medical school. That is what I am interested in at the moment. That and IM/FM. How are these specialties for a military doctor?

Also how is family life for a military doctor. I have a husband and a 7 month old currently. I do remember my dad being deployed a lot but that was at the height of the wars with Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Operation Desert Storm. If you have a family, do you regret enlisting? Can you find a balance?

You will move a lot more than doctors outside of the military, unless you get lucky. You will probably deploy at some point, although it's hard to predict how much based on current OPTEMPO, because that won't be the same in 4+X years. There are extremes in both, and your experience will vary accordingly. If you have concerns, pay for your own education and commission for the shortest period possible. Or don't join at all. Read the forums for details.

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[FrugalMuscle]

Family life isn't so bad. One thing to consider though is if they send you OCONUS then your husband will likely be unemployed for that duration. Also, think long and hard about deployments because that can pull you away for months at a time.

 

[DD214_DOC]

Psych was all the rage a few years ago, and was very well funded and equally demanded. Now, the demand continues -- though seems to be waning a bit -- but funding is drying up. You will not be classified as a psychiatrist or physician, but as a, "prescriber", and that will be your one and only role. However, since the federal goverment does a terrible job of hiring therapists who are actually qualified to be therapists, none of your patients will ever receive effective evidence-based therapeutic interventions, so the patients you manage medications for will likely never really improve. Your boss may be a psychologist or even a social worker. Nobody in charge understands what psych does, so you will be held accountable for not magically fixing everyone who walks through your door within whatever meaningless artificial timeframe was made up by people who enjoy metrics. These same people seem to not understand that subjective screening measures are not diagnostic instruments. Primary care will refer literally everything to you, and refuse to accept back any stable patients so you can accomodate the infinite deluge of their referrals.

I wish I could comment more on family life, but I will have to wait until I'm actually able to spend more than an hour with them to find out.

 

[teacherman84]

Primary care will refer literally everything to you, and refuse to accept back any stable patients so you can accomodate the infinite deluge of referrals.

In defense of primary care, it's hard to get too deep into mental health and feel like you are doing it justice when you get a 20 min appt, which they were 10 min late to, the tech took 10 minutes with them checking all the silly boxes for all the screening, preventing med, other mil nonsense.
Getting much beyond first line therapies for depression/anxiety and such is hard with the limited time were allowed

 

[DD214_DOC]

In defense of primary care, it's hard to get too deep into mental health and feel like you are doing it justice when you get a 20 min appt, which they were 10 min late to, the tech took 10 minutes with them checking all the silly boxes for all the screening, preventing med, other mil nonsense.
Getting much beyond first line therapies for depression/anxiety and such is hard with the limited time were allowed

I understand that, but refusing to assume care for a stable patient with a simple psych med regimen is absurd. Good luck managing a high risk bipolar patient because I had to stop accepting new referrals due to getting my 50th straightforward ADHD case this month.

I'm also tired of midlevels telling patients they can't rx Zoloft due to being a midlevel.

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[teacherman84]

I understand that, but refusing to assume care for a stable patient with a simple psych med regimen is absurd. Good luck managing a high risk bipolar patient because I had to stop accepting new referrals due to getting my 50th straightforward ADHD case this month.

I'm also tired of midlevels telling patients they can't rx Zoloft due to being a midlevel.

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Yeah, I can see that.

How are they refusing? your consult makes recs for mgmt and then signs off and they keep getting sent back? or you are contacting the providers and requesting then to assume care and they refuse?

The mid level training is so variable and we're usually overrun with new trainees who have narrow exposure/variable preceptors. they prob have never seen it done right and it scares them. we get the pa students in our MTF in on all our didactics and treat them like residents.