I was considering going back into the Army after I graduated Pharm School. Speaking from experience, I know that the Army really tests your limits and takes care of their professionals. I worked with veterinarians solely because the Army in all its wisdom had recently separated our command (VETCOM, or the Veterinary Command) from the Army's total heathcare-wide command, or MEDCOM (Medical Command), but our particular branch worked alot with the local hospital, but fiscally, we had been weened off from the total medical department and are now our own separate entity in the Army. As a PharmD holder, you'd enter as an O3, Captain, in the Medical Services Corps of Officers. You cannot be in it for the money. You cannot be in it for he money. Total pay is your base pay (or rank pay) plus a monthly allowance for food and housing (which fluctuates if you have dependents, but can be as much as half of your total take home pay). The short-term pay is nothing though, because all ranks are paid the same- something to do with the value of the rank over the value of the position, so you're paid the same as a captain (with 0 year of experience and 0 years in service) as the guy whose been in for years and worked his way from Lieutenant to Captain (usually an automatic promotion after 3 years). What you can't quanitfy is what makes the military the best of similar civilian alternatives: 1. You retire after 20 yrs. You begin collecting retirement after 20 years and you don't have to wait til 65. The retirement benefit is noncontributory, and I think you get 40-50% of your base pay.. so say you acheived the rank of Colonel after 20 years of service. Base pay for an O6 Colonel is around $6-7000 monthly.. so you get roughly half of that. So if you start at 24, and retire at 44, that leaves you in a good place with years of experience and an active pension, with at least 20 years of work left in you to build another retirement nest egg in the civilian sector. But for retirement purpose, base pay is all you get, which is pay strictly based on your rank at the time of retirement. 2. The experience. No company on the planet can boast a practice that gives you experience in all facades of the field. The Army controls a wide array of practices, so you might start as a hospital pharmacist, and at your next duty site you may be placed in a small community based practice (retail equivalent). You may do some research. The Army loves to start their new medical professionals off as a local MEDDAC (Medical Dept. Activity) commanders. This is your first taste of leadership. You basically command all the enlisted personnel (all the technicians- pharm techs, radiotechs, medical techs, etc. all non officer personnel) from the base hospital. Every MEDDAC Commander I've encountered were newly acquired doctors, pharmacists and other healthcare professionals in the Army, and so are usually captains. As you move up in rank you move up in responsibility. By the time you're a field grade officer (O4-O6: Major, Lt. Colonel and Colonel) you have the opportunity to transcend beyond your degree and into a broader spectrum of healthcare management. So you might be in charge of a particular hospital dept (all of pharmacy dept.). and work your way up to the hospital commander, responsible for the entire operations of a base hospital (these are usually Colonels). I was enlisted as a food/health inspector, which was apart of the VETCOM (Veterinary Command) and all of our officers were Veterinarians. As doctorate holders, they too come in as Captains. Promotions are good as a MEDCOM (Medical Command- or the entire Medical Forces for the Army) officers, and so the sky is the limit, If rank and leading people appeals to you. It does to me, which I why I'm seriously considering joining again after graduation. A guy I went thru job training with back in 1997 when I first enlisted is now a medical dept. recruiter. The Army will repay loans up to $30,500 a year for 4 years, so there's opportunity to lose your debt. For my dept. and most of the medical personnel who belong to the hospital, you're existence is basically a 9-5 existence. With the permission of the hospital commander, or your supervisor, alot of the professionals were given permission to take on local practices as long as it didn't conflict with their military duties, so alot of hospital personnel got secondary jobs at civilian hospitals. This is all unadvertised information that you wouldn't know about. The Army doesn't advertise this, so it's something I know after spending 4 years in the Army. Feel free to PM me is you guys have any other questions, I'll try to help.
