Navy Military flight and dive surgeon?

[KilgoreSnout]

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I have a fledgling understanding of the military medicine route, and have heard that taking a couple years to either be an undersea medical officer or a flight surgeon is not too hard to do. But could a navy doc feasibly do both? What would that do to one's career progression and professional development?

 

[WildWing]

Moving this to the Military Medicine forum.

 

[j4pac]

I have a fledgling understanding of the military medicine route, and have heard that taking a couple years to either be an undersea medical officer or a flight surgeon is not too hard to do. But could a navy doc feasibly do both? What would that do to one's career progression and professional development?

You could probably do both. The Navy has little incentive to have you do both. I think that career progression is probably a little bit overblown. There is a difference between becoming a flight surgeon and then just hanging out for 10 years versus continue to further your education in a different military pathway.

 

[FlightDocDan]

Short answer - you can do both if you want...

should you do both? really depend on what your end goal is, in terms of medical career, and how long you want to spend having "fun" in the military medicine before growing up to be a more "real" doctor lol

 

[Atlas Shrugged]

To read between the lines: this is stupid. Don’t do this.

 

[militaryPHYS]

3 year minimum to serve in each OMO area of training. I.e. flight training 6 months, 3 years service + dive training 6 months plus 3 years service.

Possible? Yes. Common? No.

 

[orbitsurgMD]

There would be little value to the Navy in your doing both. The practice opportunities are directed toward one community or the other. There is no overlap. You would likely have encouragement/pressure to do the Aviation Medicine or Undersea Medicine residencies: a two-year occupational medicine program with an MPH and a rotating outpatient occupational medicine year. At one point, and possibly still, there was pressure to do a primary care residency in IM or FP or EM first and then the Occ Med as a second residency. That apparently gave more clinical standing to senior aviation medicine grads working also as carrier medical department heads. I'm not sure that held up well to the demand for flight surgeons and the wish not to expend a training slot in sought-after programs like EM to someone who wasn't going to work in an ED.