I signed up for the Student Doctor Network for the sole purpose of trying to get the word out about the National Health Service Corps. I have not have a good experience with this so-called "scholarship." Like most of you, I was 21 and finishing up college when I applied for the scholarship thinking that it would be a great deal, and I thought I wanted to do primary care or Ob/Gyn at the time. My parents could not help me pay for medical school, and I was facing $30,000 a year in tuition at a private medical school. Very soon after I signed on for the scholarship, I regretted my decision.
You may think you want to do primary care now, but PLEASE consider the fact that most people change their minds when they get to medical school. If you limit yourself by taking the scholarship, you will miss out on a ton of possibilities and may be extremely unhappy with primary care. You may get to medical school and love a subspecialty like radiology or optho that you had no experience with or had never considered before. I am now an Ob/Gyn, but I couldn't even consider a ton of other specialties that I really liked because I was limited by the NHSC. When I tried to get out of the deal, they said it would be three times the loan amount plus interest to pay it back (adding up to over $300,000 for what was a $60,000 scholarship), and even though I contacted them in my first year of medical school, they required that I do at least 2 years of service.
That was only the beginning of the nightmare. When it came time to try to find a position in my last year of residency, I discovered that the NHSC is not helpful at all with the job search. They make a big show of it and have you go to a coference and meet with an "advisor" who basically doesn't help you at all. They score different jobs or cities with HPSA scores, and as an MD, that score had to be a 14 for me to work there. My husband was living in Columbus, Ohio, and I was finishing residency in Alabama, and the score in the area where he was living was 13, and the NHSC does not work with you, so I basically have been living apart from my husband for the last 2 years because the HPSA score in his area was one point lower than the NHSC would accept.
On top of that, the jobs for Ob/Gyn were few and far between. The two jobs I looked at were ones that I found myself, and the center where I work in Mississippi had to create a position for me, as did the center I was looking at in Cincinnati. I worked for 6 months on creating an NHSC job in Cincinnati only to have it fall through. It is only because of a friend who worked in Mississippi that I was able to create another job. The other possibilities on the NHSC website basically boiled down to San Jose prison. Also, for Ob/Gyn, the sites are mostly clinics, and they do not help you with hospital privileges or arranging anything you'll need to do deliveries or surgeries. I had to join a practice part-time to get all of that straigtened out, so to meet the 21 hours of underserved clinic time required for Ob/Gyns, I work in the community health center two days a week, which consists of two 10.5 hour days, and I miss out on delivering or taking care of my patients at the hospital and at my other office.
I won't even go into the frustrations of working in a community health center, but I have not been happy with my job, and all of this has put a strain on my personal life. Because I had to join a private practice so that I could have a normal Ob/Gyn job (i.e. with surgeries and deliveries and not just clinic hours), I am going to owe a $60,000 malpractice tail when I leave so that I can finally move and be with my husband who has been unable to move because he was already commited to a training program before I started searching for my NHSC job. Basically, I am going to owe a tail that is equal to the amount that the NHSC paid me, so I could have just paid that toward my student loans myself. Also, keep in mind that, when you start working, if you have a good job, the hospital usually pays towards your loans, and you will make enough to pay the money yourself. You do not need the NHSC if you are doing it for financial reasons.
Finally, keep in mind that it is considered taxable income, so you will have to come up with money to pay taxes on whatever amount they give you at the end of each year, which is not easy for a student.
I just wanted to give you guys a personal account from someone who has been there and encourage you not to sign up for the NHSC! You will be able to pay off your loans, but please don't limit yourself or risk damaging your personal life in the process.