I was chatting with an AF doc yesterday about career stuff and she mentioned moonlighting as a pretty normal thing some folks to do keep their skills up. Is that common across all the services? All specialties? Are there any drawbacks to this?
Anybody here moonlight that could shed some light on this? Thanks!
Moonlighting is very common, though it is harder with some specialties than others. Shift worker kind of specialties have an easier time than those that are inherently longer term doctor-patient relationships with repeat visits. One universal rule is a prohibition of long term / ongoing commitments to the care of a patient.
The paperwork hassle varies with individual commands. At my current command, we no longer have to file monthly logs of hours worked. The approval process takes a week or two. There's some annual online training and renewal paperwork. Fill out a form, wait. They will withhold permission if you have PFA failures or basic deployment readiness deficiencies. I had one held up for a couple weeks last year because my department didn't have some unrelated credentialing paperwork filed on time for me. For the most part, it's a very reasonable process.
Like a lot of things in the military, you can choose to be mad about the imposition on your time, or you can choose not to be.
The main difficulty is that working a weekday someplace usually requires you to spend vacation days. There are rules regarding mandatory rest periods between civilian and military shifts. Rules about total hours per week. Laws against self referral and double billing the government.
If you want to moonlight close to the base where you're stationed, you can run into trouble with places willing to hire you, because they can't bill for any care you provide to DOD beneficiaries. Many places will just eat that cost because they need the help.
Ultimately you're at the mercy of your command. They don't have to let you moonlight. But most leaders get it - they understand it's good for skill retention and morale. They're required to have oversight and a system for monitoring personnel who engage in off duty employment. Don't pick fights you don't have to. Don't piss people off. Don't cause idle trouble. Don't be the guy who constantly ignores uniform regulations. This is common sense stuff ... try to maintain a good working relationship with your bosses and they won't maliciously spike your wheel when you want or need something.
Be aware that some staff resent the notion of doctors moonlighting. There's often some jealousy involved. Be discreet about your moonlighting. Avoid talking about it where nurses, non physician officers, and enlisted can overhear. Most of them make a lot less that you do and have little perspective on how underpaid we are for what we do. Don't mention how much money moonlighting pays within earshot, or how much better the EMR is, or how the nurses are more helpful, or how the techs have been doing their job for 10 years as opposed to the 6 month standard block our enlisted often do prior to rotation to another service at a MTF. In short, be courteous and professional, do your command-mandated paperwork, be discreet, and it'll work out fine.
